


After, Therefore Because of It

by alby_mangroves, noncorporealform



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, P.I. Bucky Barnes, Past Sexual Abuse, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, further cw in the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-17 21:57:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 93,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11860437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves, https://archiveofourown.org/users/noncorporealform/pseuds/noncorporealform
Summary: “If you move back to Brooklyn, we can pick up where we left off,” Bucky said.“Where did we leave off?” Steve asked.Bucky had an image in his head that had never dimmed in intensity. It was a closed door. The door in his childhood apartment, and Steve was on the other side of it, walking away down the hall. Confusion grabbed at his seventeen year-old heart. He had wanted Steve back as soon as he walked away, even though he understood the reasons for him leaving.Where Bucky wanted to pick up was to figure out that strain in his heart that came after the door shut, the one he hadn’t understood, and still didn’t.“I don’t know,” Bucky admitted.Steve wants Bucky’s help to solve the murder of Dr. Abraham Erskine. Meanwhile, Bucky wants to find out what happened to Steve after his mysterious disappearance at seventeen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can find the art for this fic also posted on Alby's [tumblr](http://artgroves.tumblr.com), in the [After, Therefore Because of It tag](http://artgroves.tumblr.com/tagged/after-therefore-because-of-it)!
> 
> More thanks and acknowledgements at the endnotes!
> 
> It would be good to address any concerns that anybody had about the nature of violence and abuse in this fic. I stay fairly close to the tropes and hallmarks of the thriller and mystery genres, and those hallmarks are often about the darker parts of life. With that in mind, I’ve laid out a list of content warnings that may be more specific which appear in the story to make it easier for some to proceed. Those that don’t want spoilers or warnings at all, please skip over the following paragraph.
> 
> Further CW: guns, knives, brass knuckles, drug use, a brief ethnic slur, choking (non-erotic), child endangerment, neglect, chronic illness, loss of appetite, depression, institutionalization, hospitalization, past medical procedures, human experimentation, scars, disease, nightmares, cults, serial killers, minor character death, murder, past sexual abuse (recalled, not explicitly shown)

 

 

Tar and grit scratched Bucky’s chest as he lay on the ground of the building, his rifle poised on a tripod, pointing at the apartment building windows. The Remington was solid in his grip and his finger pressed into the finger guard. A tattoo came into focus through the crosshairs of Bucky’s sniper rifle. The tiger was faded and the ink bled from sun and poor care. It was almost a blotch, but it still had the general shape. He focused the sight on the lens and it was even sharper. He could see everything down to the small cuts on the man’s face and the dead skin of his chapped lips. He adjusted the grip on his rifle and exhaled. The radio chattered in his ear.

“ _Do not engage, repeat, do not yet engage_.”

The suspect, Jason Mills, wandered around the apartment, scattered and fidgety. If he knew SWAT was surrounding his apartment building, he wasn’t panicking about it. That wasn’t the reason for his ticks and erratic motions. Mills had bumped a little bit of meth just as they were coordinating the raid. Double-edged sword—he was more likely to screw up, but much more unpredictable.

The other two snipers were poised with their rifles pointed to different floors. There was no telling how much of the cell had taken up residence in the run-down slum, but on the third floor it was just Mills. That much was Bucky’s responsibility—the big boss, the collar they were all looking to get.

Something small skittered in the periphery of Bucky’s vision. He swept the layout of the apartment, waiting for another suspect to show themselves. He peered down dark halls and into the sharp corners of the apartment for anyone to show their faces.

The kid couldn’t have been more than seven years old, wearing a white and blue striped shirt. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, skinny for his age and height. Even if Mills didn’t have that same blonde hair and blue eyes, the resemblance was enough for Bucky to clock the kid as Mills’. He pressed the button on his radio and talked into the mic near his face.

“There’s a kid,” Bucky said into his headset.

“ _Repeat_ ,” came a voice over the radio.

“There’s a goddamn kid. You said the family was accounted for.”

“ _They’re supposed to be_.”

 _Supposed to be_ , Bucky thought, chewing on the words like tough jerky.

“Shit,” Bucky said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

When Bucky looked back through his scope, something had changed. He focused the lens. His gut ground itself up when he saw Mills hit his own kid. Something had set him off, but Bucky didn’t care what it was. Nothing the kid could have done would be bad enough to get dragged around by the hair. Bucky seethed, his finger pressing harder on the finger guard, imprinting a sickle onto his finger.

The SWAT teams were in the other apartments, but hadn’t worked their way to Mills yet. Bucky pictured how much of a bump Mills had taken, and the fact of the kid’s skinny neck with a hand around his throat.

With the kid in the frame of the window, Bucky had no clean shot, no line-of-sight that would give him Mills. That didn’t mean there was nothing he could do.

He scanned the apartment. Found a gleaming mirror in the hall. Pulled the trigger.

The bullet rocketed out of his rifle and crashed into the mirror, sending shards into the apartment. He could hear the musical sound of broken glass hitting hard floor, even in the echo of the rifle blast.

Mills was predictable. The kid fell down as his father dropped him, scrambling under the kitchen table to get away from him. For a second Mills was too shocked too move, crouching and on his toes. The SWAT team was almost there. Bucky kept his sight on Mills.

Mills bolted. The SWAT team had only just come up the stairs. Mills was working his way to the fire exits in the opposite direction.

“Come _on_ ,” Bucky spat, standing up and collapsing his rifle’s tripod.

“ _Barnes, you don’t have the authorization to leave your post. SWAT is en route to—”_

Bucky tore the radio out of his ear. He headed east, moving across the rooftops. He crossed to the next building with a small leap, the rooves nearly the same height. At the far end of the building, he brought his rifle up and stared down the barrel, through the sights. The angle wasn’t perfect. There was a mild crosswind coming from the south-east. He did a quick estimate of windspeed and calculated. He had to plant his foot on the edge of the roof to steady himself, but his hands were still as concrete. Mills dropped out of the fire escape, as Bucky knew he would.

Bucky inhaled.

Exhaled.

Took the shot.

#

Bucky slammed his helmet onto the table as the SWAT team began to file into the equipment room. He stripped himself of the bullet-proof vest and his tactical gear, each rip and unbuckling punctuating the anger that was stewing about his head. Cool air hit his sweat-soaked torso as his skin was finally able to breathe through his black cotton t-shirt.

Beside him came the familiar presence of Sam Wilson. He didn’t even have to turn his head to know the expression that would be on his face. Sam, in turn, began to take off his SWAT gear with only slightly less urgency.

“Don’t say anything,” Bucky said.

“You alright?” Sam asked.

“I shot him in the leg, of course I’m alright.”

“But you took a shot.”

“I’ve shot people before.”

“Not on the job.”

Something in Bucky cooled at Sam’s concern. It was natural—they were partners. They looked out for each other, and that’s all he was doing. Bucky took in a great breath through his nose and felt much of the stress dissipate—but not all.

It was true. There was war, and there was the job. Some parts of him had never left Iraq, and he had come to terms with that. But it was the first time he’d fired a gun outside a range since coming home, years before.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Sam,” Bucky said. “He was gonna get away.”

“You could have waited for my SWAT team to get there,” Sam snapped.

“You didn’t see it. He was going to kill his kid.”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest and stepped back, his eyes to the ceiling as he thought. He raised a hand as he ran things by Bucky.

“So, you made a judgement call,” Sam said. “Using what part of your head, exactly?”

“I made it with my gut.”

“Of course. Your gut. This isn’t TV, Bucky, it’s the NYPD. And I can’t protect you from what’s coming next.”

#

Bucky dropped his keys in the bowl on the dresser near the door. He hefted the bag he was holding higher onto his shoulders, his arms getting tired.

“Caaaat!” Bucky yelled into the apartment.

Gunpowder ran into the hallway, chirping with each rapid step he took. The small, gray cat’s green eyes were set in a lionish face. They stood out even in the low light of the dingy hallway bulb. He jumped up and put his paws on Bucky’s shin. A long wail followed.

“Yeah, I know, buddy,” Bucky said. “I got your food.”

Gunpowder followed him to the kitchen where he scooped the dry food into a bowl. The cat dove in, ignoring the human who had brought him food. Bucky put the cat food away, opened the fridge and scanned its contents. Finding everything unsatisfactory, he grabbed a beer.

A detective’s exam guidebook sat on the kitchen table. It was heavy and floppy, flagged with post-it notes, and nearly every page was underlined and highlighted. The book made a heavy thump as he threw it back down on top of a pile of other books. He’d pulled quite a few from his alma mater’s bookstore, ransacking the sociology, psychology and forensic studies classes. For weeks, Bucky studied them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

A presentiment gave him a sour feeling in his belly. He walked away from them like they were yesterday’s newspapers.

He shrugged his jacket off, throwing it on a chair that had collected other items of clothing over the weeks. It was a relatively clean apartment, but it spoke of single male occupancy. The couch facing the TV was the biggest decorating decision, furniture and surfaces collected an unorganized array of things that he would get to one day. The odd can and bottle littered the place. The six-hundred square foot one-bedroom was in an old building, and the wear showed. The walls were cracked near the ceiling, the kitchen was from the twenties, last updated in the sixties. The bathroom was cramped because it used to be a closet.

Bucky crashed on his couch, putting his feet up on the table, crossing his legs at the ankles. He grabbed his tablet from the side table. His inbox had blown up with work-related garbage, personal emails with his sister and mother, and an annoying amount of coupons and special offers. He wanted nothing to do with any of it.

The cat jumped up and sat on the arm of the couch, licking its lips. It eyed him curiously when he turned his head. He made his hand into a fist and held it out. The cat tapped his closed fist with his paw in a cautious little bump before going back to grooming itself.

Uninvited thoughts ran through Bucky’s head. He thought about if he should maybe trade in his expensive New York living and move to Illinois where his family had settled, and where cheaper rent awaited him. He thought about maybe looking into taking heavier shifts. He worried about his student loan payments and vet bills.

Strangely, none of these were at the forefront of his mind.

He tried to keep the impulse down. His tongue in his cheek, he thought of everything else he could be doing. Besides, it made him feel like a stalker.

It had been a while. Might as well.

He opened the facebook app. He had an account for one reason. He never posted or added any friends. Even when friends and family tried to message him, the notifications stayed ignored. As far as he was concerned, the site had one function.

He put a name, a very common name, into the search bar. There were thousands of Steve Rogers’, but Bucky always gave out hope that he would see a skinny little guy with blonde hair staring out at him through a few compressed pixels. He sifted through the results until his eyes got heavy and he fell asleep on the couch, the gentle pressure of the cat nestled up against his head, lulling him to sleep.

#

 

 

 

 

#

_Squares of sunlight hit the wall with all of Bucky’s posters and family pictures, a space plastered with teenage obsessions from floor to ceiling. Bucky woke up, his arm dangling off the side of the bed. Stiff, he looked around his bedroom. It was early. Real early. Like it wasn’t summer break and his alarm had just gone off for school. Something had woken him. Scanning his brain, he tried to figure out if maybe it was the birds, or a cat outside, or something in the house that had woken him. It was coming from underneath and he craned his head down._

_The small figure laid on the guest mattress, curled into a ‘c’, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes. There was a long whine from Steve’s throat and Bucky knew that sound._

_Sleep was snatched from his head. He threw his blanket off and crawled down until he slid in between Steve and his bed frame. At the pressure of Bucky getting into his bed, Steve tried to stop himself up, wiping his tears away with a quick motion under each eye._

_“I’m fine,” Steve said. “Bucky, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”_

_Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s chest, pinning his arms to his sides. Steve had his face in his hands again. Bucky pressed his forehead to the back of Steve’s neck, feeling Steve fight to suppress the heavy breath in his chest. Steve was not a crier. Bucky knew this. Steve had once broken his ankle and on the entire way to the hospital there wasn’t much to speak for his pain but a blotchy, red face and angry grunts._

_This hurt was something else._

_“I miss my mom,” Steve said._

_Bucky screwed up his face, swearing the waterworks were going to start for him, too. He couldn’t say anything. They’d already said everything that could be said—at the funeral, after it, at school when Steve was having a hard time. Today was different._

_Today was the last day._

_“I know,” was all Bucky could say._

_The thing hovered over them. The specter that belied the treacherously cheerful yellow that shone in through Bucky’s window, the chirping birds, and his early-rising neighbor’s mellow records._

_“I don’t want to go,” Steve said. “I don’t want to go.”_

_There was nothing Bucky could do but hold him tighter._

_It was the last everything. The last morning; the last vulnerable, naked moment; the last sleepover; the last secret between them. They both held each other, telling each other promises they wouldn’t be able to keep._

#

“I don’t understand,” Bucky said, leaning forward. “I’m being _fired_?”

Phillips’ office was a dark, private place, the sort of place you didn’t want to end up. It reminded Bucky too much of the principal’s office, the inside of which he’d been well acquainted with as a kid. His commanding officer stared over his desk at him with all the wrath that could be summoned from a guy who was silent the majority of the time.

“I just got a couple of questions before I ask you to pack up your desk,” Phillips said. “Actually, just the one. Who the hell is Steve Rogers?”

Bucky’s stomach dropped to around his ankles like Phillips had snapped it free with a giant pair of scissors.

They’d followed the paperwork.

All things being equal, Bucky could have been more careful. He was a cop. He knew how paperwork worked. There were trails and contingencies and internal checks and balances. Anyone looking for a bug would have found it. And Internal Affairs had been up Bucky’s ass even before he shot that meth kingpin in the leg.

“It’s just something I’m following up on,” Bucky began.

“Seems like you’ve been following up on this kid for a long time,” Phillips said.

Phillips reached into his desk and pulled a stack of papers. It dropped on the surface of the desk with a heavy thud. The stack was made up of file folders and envelopes overflowing with page flags. Bucky swallowed. They’d gotten into his desk.

“Internal Affairs showed up and practically used all this as a suppository in order to get me to figure out why you’ve been digging up dirt on this man for his entire tenure.”

“I can explain.”

“Son, this better be good.”

“He’s missing.”

“Not according to any records I saw on him. And you’re not even in missing persons.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched, muscles flexing near his jaw. The explanation wasn’t an easy one. But if he had any chance of keeping his job, keeping his hold on this thread—

“He was my best friend in high school. We were seventeen and he went into the foster system. Then one day he was just…gone. So, I figured, when I had some free time—”

“There’s no free time here. You have paperwork and cases, you have beats to walk. You know goddamn well that you do.”

“Sir, it’s just that this should be a missing person case and it’s never—”

“I looked at your ‘research,’ Barnes. His juvenile record is sealed. A record that you cannot get into unless you have a hell of a court order. Do you got a court order?”

“But—“

“A sealed record and nothing more doesn’t mean missing person, it means someone who probably has a whole life that doesn’t involve you.”

“But—”

“You do understand that you’re stalking this young man, using the resources of the New York City Police Department?”

“ _Someone_ needs to be looking for him.”

“Nobody needs to be investigated if there’s no warranting cause. You want to try looking for your friend, do what everybody else does—look them up on facebook.”

“Sir—”

“You’re fired, Sergeant Barnes. Clear out your desk and hand in your gun and your badge.”

There was nothing in Phillips face that said further negotiations were forthcoming. That didn’t mean Bucky was about to go out with his head hanging low. He pushed himself up from his chair and stood over Phillips desk. The two men held each other’s gaze. He was going to lose the standoff, but it didn’t much matter.

“After everything, this is how it’s going to end?” Bucky said. “The crap you let other cops get away with and you’re asking me to walk away when I’m this close to making detective?”

“I’m not the one who made your mistakes,” Phillips said. “You were a good cop right until the point when you decided to take matters into your own hands. I don’t just mean this Rogers kid. I mean taking on sniper duty and firing without warning.”

“The largest meth kingpin in Brooklyn was going to go to ground and you want me to feel bad about shooting him in the leg? This is really what it’s about, isn’t it? IA wants me gone because I made a judgement call.”

“Soldier, if you had acted like this was Brooklyn and not Fellujah, maybe nobody would have gone poking around and I wouldn’t be losing one of my best officers.”

Bucky wasn’t sure how to take Phillips admittance of how he valued him. The stone-faced captain had always been hard to get a read on, and even harder to get approval out of. Here he was, face to face with the least responsive captain on the force and he was firing him while telling him he was one of his best.

 It could have come at a better time.

“So, this is it,” Bucky said.

“This is it, son,” Phillips said, leaning back in his chair.

It was clear from Phillips’ face that he didn’t want to be doing this. Some part of Bucky hoped that in the next few seconds there would be _something_ from the man, some realization that what he was doing was just part of the politics that they all hated. Phillips was a smart man—he already knew the score. Bucky stepped back as he realized that this wouldn’t move him.

He put his badge on the desk and then took his gun from its holster. He pulled out the magazine, yanked the top back to show there was no bullet in the cartridge and set it on Phillips’ desk.

There were, of course, stares as he packed his meager collection of things into a paper box. He was fuming, throwing things in without much care for his possessions. In the bullpen, he was exposed and he felt all the eyes on him, but it didn’t make him act any more dignified.

He remembered that the folder he kept with Steve’s information was gone. _Fucking IA_ , Bucky thought. He would be starting over.

As he lifted his things and turned to leave there was only one person he shared eye contact with. His partner, Sam Wilson, followed him out of the room with his eyes, his expression tense and fathomless.

#

Bucky woke to a knocking at his door. Disoriented, forgetting that he had fallen asleep on the couch with his clothes on again, he pushed himself up. Gunpowder made an annoyed grumble before walking across his back and heading into the hallway.

He peered through the peephole, saw who it was, and sighed.

Sam leaned against the doorframe. Bucky groaned and closed his eyes.

“I’m not ready for this,” Bucky said.

“That’s too bad, because it’s happening,” Sam said.

Gunpowder weaved his way between Sam’s legs, meowing up at him, before going back inside the apartment.

“Come in, I’ll make you a cup of coffee,” Bucky offered.

“It’s a little late for coffee,” Sam said.

“What time is it?”

“It’s two in the afternoon, dumbass. You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I had to wait until my swing shift was over to come by.”

“I’m still making the coffee.”

The phrase “I hate ironic statements on mugs” stood out on the side of the ceramic. Bucky poured coffee into it and liberally applied sugar and milk. Sam sat across from him at the little table, cramped as it was. He folded his hands together.

“You live in a garbage apartment,” Sam said.

“Mmm,” Bucky agreed through his sip of coffee.

“How’re you gonna afford your garbage apartment now? Did you think about that before you pulled that stunt?”

“It wasn’t a stunt. You know I had to shoot that guy. He was going to go underground.”

“You think I’m talking about that? I’m talking about Steve. _Your obsession_. That was bound to run up and bite you in the ass.”

“You know I have to keep tabs on him.”

Sam ran his hand down his face and stared at the ceiling. Bucky could tell he was asking the universe for patience, but Bucky remained unapologetic.

“I was damn close to making detective,” Bucky said.

“I know,” Sam said. “Why do you think I’m so pissed at you?”

“You’re always pissed at me.”

“That’s what happens when you’ve got someone to worry about. You get pissed at them.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. Sam’s face was firm. He softened against it.

“They gave me the detective’s exam instead,” Sam said.

Bucky paused mid-drink. He blinked rapidly and leaned in. “And?”

“And you’re looking at Detective Wilson, homicide. In a few weeks, while things get adjusted.”

“Holy cow. Congrats, man.”

“They would have given you the test, too.”

Bucky rolled his shoulders and fell back into his chair.

“I’m happy for you,” Bucky said. “But I don’t think I was cut out to be a cop. I didn’t think there’d be that much politics. I’m done with it. I’m not going to try to get back in.”

“So bein’ a cop’s not for you. What’s next?”

“I’ll figure something out. I have a degree in criminal justice and work experience. Something’ll come up.”

“Okay. This is going to sound like too much, too soon, but I may know where you can find a job.”

Sam reached into his back pocket and took out his notepad. He scribbled a number on it, tore the piece of paper out, and slid it towards Bucky.

“What’s this?” Bucky asked.

“That’s the name and number of a private investigation firm.”

“Banner Investigations? I’m not gonna become a PI, Sam.”

“This is one of the good ones. No digging around in the garbage. You need to get back into this kinda work as soon as possible. Bad things happen to cops who suddenly find themselves with nothing to do. The mortality rate skyrockets.”

“I’m gonna be fine.”

“Look into it.”

Sighing, Bucky settled even further down in his chair. His eyes shifted to the pile of textbooks next to him, then back to his steaming coffee.

“What about becoming a bartender?” Bucky said. “I could be a barista, maybe. I could do that job. Something nice where I don’t have to worry about people getting shot or stabbed.”

“You really think you’d be able to handle customer service? Come on.”

Bucky tried to wrap his head around the concept of being a PI. He’d not had a lot of good experience with them, and he had always thought of them as not much more than a necessary evil. But then the truth of what Sam said rang in his head—he was headed for boredom and self-destruction if he didn’t do _something_.

He picked up the piece of paper. The apartment was silent for a while, pooling around them in anticipation. He tapped the piece of paper on the wood of his kitchen table, finding he was seeing what Sam was offering him.

“Can I use you as a reference?” Bucky asked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Five Months Later…**

Light cut across Bucky’s eyes as an SUV passed him, shining its front beams into his rearview mirror. With some annoyance, Bucky flipped the mirror up. He sat inside his black Volkswagen Golf, feeling like he’d sunk into the night, safe and insulated.

A man walked out of the front doors of the brownstone, hugging his large blue peacoat tighter around him. Mark Larsson. Chief financial officer at a small company. The kind of guy with his hands on the books.

Surveying the street, Larsson managed not to see Bucky sitting in his car. He stepped down the stairs, walked down to a Lexus, got in and drove away.

Bucky followed the Lexus out of the side streets and into the city proper. He stayed back, never losing Larsson. He anticipated where he might be going and kept his sight on the car’s blinker. Slow and steady kept him just behind him.

Larsson stopped at a Ramada. There were a lot of reasons to stop at a cheaper hotel, but knowing the guy’s income range, there were only two reasons to walk into something less fancy. The first reason was to get a cheap room. The second was anonymity.

He waited until Larsson had been in the hotel for five minutes. He got out of his car and walked inside.

When it came to hotels, the trick was to act like you belonged. Bucky gave a friendly hello to the woman at the front desk, as if he was already a guest there. The Ramada was a chain, but this one was a little nicer, with a spacious lobby and a high ceiling. He spotted the man in the peacoat sitting at a high table with another man. Bucky sat down on the couch on the far side of the lobby. He took out his phone.

Neither of them noticed that Bucky had not put his cell phone down while they had their conversation. With the phone in portrait mode and being held low, anybody would assume that he was texting. They were too engaged in their conversation, anyway.

Whatever was going on between them became heated. It never exploded into all-out rage, but Larsson was clearly upset about something the other man had told him. Bucky would have given anything for audio, but that hadn’t been what he was sent out to do. Filming was the assignment and nothing else.

The argument ended and so did the meeting. Bucky stopped recording and switched his screen to Candy Crush. He waited ten minutes, saved his high score, and got back into his car.

#

Bucky slid the binder across Bruce Banner’s cluttered desk and stepped back. Bruce set down the day’s newspaper and looked at it over the top of his reading glasses. The black folder had a white cover page: “Report – Mark J. Larsson.” All of Bucky’s research was there, down to the man’s dental records and the last time he went on a date.

“The surveillance went okay,” Bucky said. “You think it’s enough?”

“It’s what our client needs,” said Bruce. “So yeah, with the video it’ll be enough to clinch it.”

“You know, when you gave me this job, you said it was gonna be a background check.”

“Yeah. This is how we do background checks.”

“If you let me work directly with the attorneys next time, there’s a lot more I could have done.”

Bruce grabbed the coffee from his coaster and took a long sip. “It’s just a background check.”

Bucky wanted more from the boss, but there was the ever-present warning: do not make him angry. An angry Bruce Banner could make your life hell, and Bucky was looking forward to his continued employment at Banner Investigations.

“Speaking of background checks,” Banner said. “You got a ping on one of your cases and it found its way to my approval inbox. You wouldn’t happen to be using this company’s considerable resources to do anything personal, would you?”

“It’s on the up-and-up,” Bucky promised.

“So, this request for a possible death certificate on someone named Steve Rogers is relevant to one of the cases you’ve been assigned?”

Bucky blanched, caught, looking for an exit. Déjà vu was his least favorite sensation. He didn’t want to say that he checked death records frequently for Steve Rogers, a specific one with a social security number that he had uncovered in his time as a police officer.

Banner pulled an envelope out of his desk. Bucky knew what it would be. All the research he had done again on Steve—credit reports, financial investigations, possible flight manifests—none of it heeding results, but the paper trail between Bucky and Steve was a straight line.

“You know, I can explain—,” Bucky began.

“There’s a kid who hasn’t been on the grid since he was seventeen years old,” Banner said. “I’m interested to know why you’re looking into it.”

“It’s just something I’ve always kept track of.”

“Why?”

If there was anybody he might be able to talk to about it—

“We were close in high school,” Bucky explained. “Really close. Haven’t seen him since he entered the foster system.”

“You know this makes you look like a stalker, don’t you?” Banner asked with a small smile. “This came to my desk because you were trying to get into the sealed records of a minor in the foster system. Using our company name.”

 _Don’t make him angry_. The warning chimed in his head again, the first thing he’d heard upon getting the job. Banner stood up, his fists on the desk. _Don’t make him angry_.

“Why isn’t this a missing person case?” Banner asked.

“’Scuse me?” Bucky asked, blinking in surprise.

“Kid’s not been on the grid since he was seventeen. By this time, he should have credit card debt up to his neck and a rental history, at least. How is it that nobody noticed this kid was missing?”

Bucky swallowed. It was the first time he hadn’t been told in express words to leave the business alone. Here was Bruce Banner, asking the question Bucky had wished everyone had asked, from his mother to the police.

“I’ve never been able to convince anybody,” Bucky said. “And the trail’s too cold for anyone to care.”

“And you knew him?”

“Since I was seven. We were raised together. We were family.”

Banner’s eyebrows raised at that. He looked down at the papers and flipped through the sparse but thorough reports.

“If anybody would have found anything by now, it would have been you,” Banner said. “You’re one of the best investigators I’ve ever had.”

Not expecting the praise, he felt his cheeks burn hot. “Thank you, sir.”

“You can relax. I’m not a ‘sir.’ Will you do me a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“Tell me if anything pops up. You got me interested. Just make sure you’re looking into this in your own time. We’ve got clients. _Paying_ clients. I don’t want you neglecting them.”

“Yes, boss.”

Bucky turned to leave.

“And, Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“You also do this on your own dime.”

Bucky nodded and left Banner’s office, feeling lighter than he could remember in years.

#

With night coming on and all of his work done, Bucky was feeling restless. He meandered home, fed the cat, and looked for something to do before realizing what he really wanted to be was out. He put his shoes back on, and grabbed his coat. Before he left his apartment, he made his hand into a fist and held it out to Gunpowder, who playfully batted it before going back to grooming himself.

At the bar, Bucky ordered a whiskey and Coke. It was early in the night so the place wasn’t full yet, but the jukebox was loud and so were the small number of patrons.

Bucky figured it might be a while until he got picked up. It was only eight in the evening on a Tuesday. He was willing to let whoever it was going to be come to him, and sometimes that took longer than usual. He propped himself up on his elbow and sipped at his drink, waiting for the liquor to loosen him up. He didn’t want to be shit-faced. It was never fun getting fucked while drunk, but he didn’t want to feel like all his muscles were grinding into his bones, either.

“Hey stranger,” said a man.

Still sipping on his drink, Bucky’s eyes darted to the guy that slid into the chair next to him. It was such a _line_ that Bucky wasn’t sure how to react at first.

“Hey, yourself,” Bucky said, testing the waters.

“Can I buy you the next one?”

Bucky looked him up and down. The man was tall and wiry, his head shaved, with a full beard. Bucky didn’t have enough experience with beards to know if he liked the feel of them just yet, but the masculinity of the man made something tighten deep inside his hips. He raised an eyebrow.

He still didn’t know his ‘type,’ but Bucky could get to know this man.

His ringtone went off.

As far as Bucky was concerned, any non-emergency phone call after seven in the afternoon should be followed up by a court date and capital punishment. At the sight of an unknown number on his screen he rolled his eyes. In the time before he was a PI, he could let unknown numbers go to voicemail, but with the way the job worked, he needed to take every call.

“I gotta take this,” Bucky said. “Watch my coat?”

Watch my coat being a euphemism for ‘that seat better not be occupied when I get back.’

Fully expecting automatic spam to report, he rushed to the quiet bathroom hallway and accepted the call.

“Hello?” Bucky said, not shy about the cranky clip in his voice.

“ _Uh, is this Bucky Barnes? I mean, James Barnes?_ ”

“Who’s asking.”

“ _You probably don’t remember me. Maybe I shouldn’t have called_ —”

“Look, who is this?”

“ _It’s Steve… Steve Rogers. From school?_ ”

Shock turned his body to stone. He tried to find words, rushing to get something to come out of his mouth before it was too late. The sound of music and the hum of people chattering became like something out of a movie playing in the background. He pressed his hand into his other ear to hear the phone call better.

“Steve?” was all Bucky could say.

“ _Look, I know it’s been a while—_ ”

“Where have you been? I mean—where are you?”

“ _I’m at the airport. JFK. I wouldn’t call out of the blue like this but I’m a little… stranded_.”

“This late at night?”

“ _I know, it’s just that I don’t know anybody in town, I lost my debit card, and I don’t have the cash for a cab_.”

“I’ll pick you up. Tell me where.”

“ _I—really? Bucky, it’s been a while._ ”

“So?”

“ _You don’t have work in the morning, or something?_ ”

“Not anymore.”

#

_Bucky’s last gift to Steve was a box, crudely wrapped, but the card on top of it was pristine. Steve pulled the card from its crisp white envelope. The card said, “Happy Birthday,” and it had a cat on it._

_“My birthday was last week,” Steve teased._

_“Shut up,” Bucky said. “Open it.”_

_Steve opened the card. A small sheet of stamps almost fell out before he caught them. Inside was neatly written Bucky’s information—his address, his email, and his phone number. Brow furrowed in confusion, Steve tore at the wrapping paper, letting it fall to the floor. The box had a clear window in it. Steve could clearly see the paper stock, envelopes, and stickers that went with a letter-writing stationery kit._

_“I got one, too,” Bucky said. “It was Becca’s idea. Figure we could write each other. Not just email. Do letters and stuff. Like they used to do in the old days.”_

_“The old days?” Steve said._

_“I mean, if you’re gonna be too busy—”_

_Steve held the present tighter. “No. I want to. It sounds awesome, Buck. I’ll write all the time.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_They stood in front of each other for a long time, not saying anything. Bucky dug the toe of his sneakers into the floor. Steve shifted on his hips._

_It was the last time they hugged. To keep the separation from prolonging, Winnie Barnes had promised to drive Steve to his meeting with his new foster parents. Bucky would stay home._

_This was it._

_Not running after Steve as the door closed was the hardest thing Bucky had ever remembered doing._

#

It was hard not to speed, but he must have, because he was there in twenty minutes. He scanned the Delta arrivals until he saw him. He parked at the loading lane. He sat inside his Golf for a little while. Steve hadn’t spotted him yet, but he could see Steve. Months of PI work and years of being a beat cop had made him good at hiding in plain sight.

Steve had long, unkempt hair that brushed his eyes. He sat among three large, black bags that he kept very close to him. His chin was propped up on his hand. He looked tired. It must have been a long flight.

Bucky realized he wasn’t ready for this.

All that time, all that looking, and here he was, and it wasn’t even Bucky who had found him. It had taken Steve calling out of the blue and inviting him to the airport. There he was.

Inhale. Exhale. Get out of the car.

Bucky wasn’t sure why he had his hands in his pockets when he came up to Steve. The other man blinked and looked up and caught sight of Bucky. Steve stood up and his eyes were wide. He looked at Bucky from his feet to his head.

Something unknotted deep in Bucky’s chest and he thought, _so this is what relief feels like_.

“Bucky,” Steve said in a breath.

“It’s been a while,” Bucky said.

He had practiced what to say, on the way there. His brain wanted to lead with a million other questions. “Where have you been? Why couldn’t I find you? Have you been living off the grid? Why don’t you even have a credit report?” He smothered those questions and instead just smiled. It must have been as soft a smile as it felt like because Steve brushed his hair away from his eyes in a way that was so familiar it crushed his heart.

“Listen, I’m real sorry, calling out of the blue like this,” Steve said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky said. “Lemme grab your bags.”

“I got it.”

Bucky ignored him and picked up one of the bags. He had to adjust his hand, not expecting it to be so heavy. He was able to lug it to his car, popping the trunk and sliding it into the back. Steve deposited the other two bags and Bucky couldn’t help noticing the state of them. They were frayed, the zippers a little bent, and one bag was repaired somewhat clumsily with duct tape. He closed the door and they got into his car.

Steve was looking at the ground, his hands rubbing together, fingers lacing and unlacing.

“You must be exhausted,” Bucky said.

“It wasn’t a long flight,” Steve said.

Bucky couldn’t quite get his car into drive. They hovered there in limbo until Bucky finally broke the peace.

“Where were you coming from?” Bucky asked.

“Chicago,” Steve said.

“You live there now?”

“I was staying with a friend. I’m sort of between places at the moment.”

The questions accumulated in his head again. What was Steve doing in Chicago? Did he have a job? What did ‘in between places’ even mean? Did Steve couch-surf a lot? Was he in a band?

“You got time to catch up?” Bucky asked.

Steve’s smile was slow and warm as he turned his head to Bucky. “Buy me a cup of coffee?”

#

Bucky brought their orders to their table. The late-night Starbucks clone was bathed in warm, yellow light. Steve had only ordered a piece of banana nut bread and a plain, black coffee with no room, while the sweet smell of Bucky’s caramel macchiato hovered over them. Bucky immediately unwrapped his bacon sandwich.

Steve still wore his jacket, even though the café was plenty warm. He hunched inside it, if Bucky were to be more apt. It was made of two layers, a hoodie and a thick military-style jacket with puffy lining. It was a size too large. Bucky slipped out of his own jacket, hoping that maybe it might make things more casual.

Sometimes, Bucky wished he didn’t notice things. Steve took a drink of his coffee and Bucky took the chance to really notice the details about Steve. And there were a lot of little details. Under the heavy coat he spotted the tear in his shirt around the collar, a hole worn out from use. His black, plain tee was also bitten by several pinprick-sized holes, showing pale skin underneath. Maybe Steve hoped people wouldn’t notice under the bulk of his coat.

“Chicago, huh?” Bucky said. “What’s in Chicago?”

“Just my job and some friends,” Steve said.

“What brings you to town?”

“A funeral.”

Steve said it as a heavy sigh. Bucky’s shoulders dropped and he put his cup down.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. “Family, or—“

“Friend,” Steve said. “His stomping grounds was Queens for a while. He has a plot there. The funeral’s tomorrow morning.”

“When’d he pass?”

“Yesterday.”

“Wow. I’m sorry. That’s sudden.”

A shadow passed over Steve’s face. He must have been conscious of his own expression. He hid his face behind another drink of coffee.

“Were you close?” Bucky urged.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “I don’t actually have a lot of friends out there. I’m a little under the radar.”

 _You’re telling me_ , Bucky thought.

“Was this like a friend-friend?” Bucky asked. “Or maybe like an old boyfriend?”

“Bucky, he was seventy-two,” Steve laughed. “His name was Abraham Erskine. He was a doctor.”

“Your doctor?”

“Sometimes.”

Bucky wasn’t sure why that undid a knot in his belly. He laughed and apologized. Something wry passed over Steve’s face and his long lashes flicked as Steve considered him from the chest up and back down again.

“Are you only in town during the funeral?” Bucky asked. “Or are you going to stay for a while.”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Sounds like a good idea. It was so last-minute, I didn’t have time to get round-trip tickets. That was kind of stupid of me. I don’t even have that much money for a motel in the city. It’s a lot more expensive than it used to be.”

“Steve. Come on.”

Steve blinked and scanned his face. Bucky could watch him become more self-conscious by the moment. “I don’t understand.”

“You can’t really just stay at some crummy motel for days when you don’t know how long you’ll be here. That’ll drain your wallet.”

“I don’t have much of a choice.”

“Yeah, you do. You need a place to stay, and I’ve got a perfectly good couch.”

Steve blinked rapidly and his spine straightened. He turned his face to his coffee cup and started to shake his head.

“No, Bucky, come on,” Steve said. “I can’t—I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Bucky said. “I’m offering. I mean, what are couches good for if you can’t let someone surf there once in a while.”

“You don’t know me.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve known you forever.”

“It’s been years since we’ve seen each other.”

“That just means we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Steve slouched to hide his face again. Something panged inside of Bucky’s chest. Steve had been kind of a shy kid, but never with him. But Steve was a little right. They didn’t know each other that well anymore. He wanted more than anything for that to change.

Steve smiled up at him, a crooked mouth charging the smile in his big, blue eyes.

When Steve said yes, something spread out from Bucky’s chest to warm his entire body.

#

Bucky led Steve up the stairs to his third-floor apartment. Bucky again picked the heavy bag as his burden. As soon as Bucky had the key in the lock he heard Gunpowder behind the door. The little gray cat took one look at Steve and let out a huge meow.

“This is Gunpowder,” Bucky said. “He’ll probably sleep on you.”

Steve couldn’t pet the cat with hands full of his bags. He still smiled down at it as they filed into the apartment.

“Hey,” Steve said, and the cat mewed back.

Bucky set the bag down by the couch and Steve set his other two bags next to it. Bucky gestured to his surroundings and let his hands drop to his sides.

“This is it,” Bucky said. “Kitchen’s in there. That’s the bathroom. And I’m in there, in the bedroom.”

“Wow,” Steve said.

“Yeah, I know, it’s pretty—“

“This is great.”

Surveying his surroundings, he wondered what Steve could possibly be talking about. It was cramped, messy, and smelled a little.

“I mean, it’s not much, but—,” Bucky began.

“You must be doing well,” Steve said. “You can afford an apartment in the city.”

“Kind of. I do private investigation work.”

“Kind of like a detective? Like in the movies?”

“Little less exciting than in the movies. Mostly I just follow people around and investigate people’s records. It’s the information age. All the criminals live in their credit reports and bank statements.”

“You had to have seen some action, though. Right?”

“Saw plenty in Iraq, and a little as a cop. Life’s a little more mellow now. I think that’s good for me.”

“Iraq? You served?”

“Just two years.”

“Wow.”

“I just remember my dad serving, and I wanted to go to college, so it was a good fit. How about you? You do anything interesting after high school?”

Steve swallowed hard. “Not really.”

The silence stretched after that. It wasn’t a good silence. Bucky hated it. He’d never had that type of silence between them before. It hovered several feet off the floor like an unnatural specter.

“When’s the funeral,” Bucky asked, changing topics.

“Tomorrow at nine a.m.,” Steve replied.

“I can make that work.”

Wide-eyed, Steve shook. “Bucky. You don’t have to.”

“It doesn’t sound like you should be alone.”

“How do you know I’ll be alone?”

“If you had someone to go to the funeral with, you wouldn’t have been stranded at JFK, looking for a motel at the last minute.”

There was a tell-tale flush, the one that always gave Steve away. Steve bit down on his jaw and lowered his head. “Your job—”

“I’m between cases,” Bucky said.

“You didn’t know him.”

“If he’s worth this to you, I owe him a little bit of my time.”

Steve exhaled. “Thank you,” he said, voice low.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Steve nodded and shrugged out of his coat, finally making himself at home.

Bucky’s breath stopped.

As a kid, Steve had been sickly, a few chronic conditions making him asthmatic, anemic, and sore all the time. Even then, their mothers had conspired to keep him well-fed, plying him with carbs and fatty meat. With Steve’s appetite, it had worked, though he never got over a buck twenty-five.

Standing as he was in Bucky’s living room, Steve seemed to be hovering on the light side of a hundred pounds. He managed to be thinner than he had been as a teenager.

That feeling came over Bucky, the one that made his stomach lurch and somersault. That dread followed him whenever he thought about the empty place where Steve Rogers was supposed to be, the fact that belied the refusal of the police to put him down as a missing person.

The questions multiplied in his head. The who, what, where, why, how, questions. Instead, he went into his hallway closet and took out sheets and a spare pillow, along with the winter blanket he wasn’t using.

“I gotta hit the hay,” Bucky said. “You should too, if we’re gonna make it to the funeral in time.”

Bucky clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulders. At the sudden, hard touch, Steve jumped, but relaxed into it.

“You better be here when I get up,” Bucky said with a smirk.

Steve smiled, bashful again. “Promise.”

Bucky gave Steve’s shoulder a little squeeze.

#

_“This isn’t fair!” Bucky yelled._

_“Don’t raise your voice to me!” Winnie Barnes said, stamping her heel._

_He tried to swallow it. It was his mom, and you don’t just yell at your mom. But the anger was pressing up, coming up to his cheekbones and stewing until he was sure he was going to blow his top._

_“He shouldn’t be going away,” Bucky said. “You know he can stay with us. We can make room for him.”_

_“You don’t just adopt someone. That’s not how it works. There’s paperwork, and we’re not related to him. Honey, you know I would make room for him—”_

_“Then do it! We’ll buy a bunk bed or something. I’ll get rid of my stuff to make room for his stuff.”_

_“I’m a single mother with two kids already. I know it’s hard to forget when I can never say no to getting you new shoes all the time, but we don’t have the income to adopt a child. And he’s seventeen. By the time the work got done he’d be eighteen anyway.”_

_“But it’s Steve.”_

_Bucky heard the crack in his voice and he hated himself for it. He was crumbling in front of his mother and that didn’t bode well for getting this done on willpower alone. His mother’s face melted and her eyes were the most compassionate he’d ever seen them._

_She still wasn’t moving._


	3. Chapter 3

Steve lingered like a ghost under a tree at the edge of the cemetery. Bucky was a sentinel beside him. The friends and family of Dr. Erskine were nearly gone, filing into cars and driving away. Silence stretched, Bucky in no rush to break it. Among the gravestones was a layer of quiet, heavy air that seemed to block out the larger noise of Queens around them. He didn’t even hear traffic. Bucky’s gaze lingered on Steve’s face. He seemed so different. He had cares that he didn’t have at seventeen, and Bucky just wished he knew them, so Steve had someone else to carry them. He suspected they were attending the funeral of the sort of person who helped carry burdens.

It wasn’t the time to ask, though. Not with a black ribbon newly pinned onto their clothes.

“I’m sorry you never met him,” Steve said. “I think you would have liked him.”

“Sounds like,” Bucky said. “And I trust your taste in character.”

Burdened silence hovered over them again. Steve rocked back and forth on his heels, and Bucky almost asked what was wrong.

“He was murdered,” Steve said.

Bucky jolted at the word. It was the way Steve had said it—with so much conviction, low, and angry. He studied Steve, who was still staring out onto the horizon. Steve’s jaw was tight, set.

“How?” Bucky asked.

“They came in the middle of the night,” Steve said. “The police said it was a robbery. Which is kind of a strange thing to say, since they didn’t take anything. The police bought the scenario, hook, line, and sinker.”

“And you know otherwise?”

“You’re damn right I do.”

Bucky hadn’t heard that tone of voice in a long time. A little thrill went through him, and it told him that he missed it.

But that was also when it sunk in.

“You didn’t just call me because you needed a ride, did you?” Bucky asked.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I had to ease into it. I wasn’t sure who to trust. You’re a detective, and you seem like the person I used to know. I don’t have a lot of people I can go to with this. I kind of don’t have any friends.”

“So, not a lot of things have changed.”

“That’s funny.”

“Come on, man. Let’s find a place to sit down. This doesn’t feel like the place.”

#

“You’re going to have to give me everything,” Bucky said.

The apartment was dim with the curtains drawn. They were both still dressed in their suits, but their collars were open and ties loosened. Steve laid upright on the couch, Gunpowder having laid claim to his lap. Steve stroked him absently as he looked, expectantly, at Bucky. Bucky stood over them, thinking about where to begin.

“Go from the beginning,” Bucky said.

Steve inhaled and his eyes shifted to the floor. Something heavy was in the air.

“I don’t know where to start,” Steve said.

“I do,” Bucky said. “Motive. You know something. You don’t come up with a cover-up story like that with no inclinations.”

“It’s a longer story than you might be prepared for.”

“Then we might as well get started.”

Steve sighed, collected himself, and straightened up. “It was about medical malpractice.”

“Against who?”

“You’re not gonna believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I needed an out. I didn’t want to be in the foster system anymore, and there was this program—”

“What kind of program?”

“The Homeless Youth and Delinquent Rehabilitation Association.”

“The Homeless Youth—H, Y, D—HYDRA. I haven’t heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have. They existed for about three years. Then they disappeared.”

“That name doesn’t tell me a lot about what they do.”

“They promised kids like me treatment.”

“Chronically ill kids.”

“Exactly. Except it was bullshit. Notice how I look like crap these days?”

“Steve, you don’t look like crap.”

Except he seemed tired. He was thin. There were dark circles under his eyes. Bucky had definitely noticed the way his breath rattled at times.

“Okay,” Bucky said, holding his hand out and leaning back in his chair. “So, your friend, Dr. Erskine, he gets wind of this organization, then finds out they’re doing what, exactly?”

Steve exhaled once through his nose. “Giving kids like me treatment without express permission from any guardians. And, you know, it’s medicine. Things go wrong. Except when they go wrong and there’s nobody to report to—”

“Jesus. There’s not a chance in hell any of that’s legal.”

“They sort of rely on people who don’t give a shit. Like the foster parents I got saddled with.”

Anger was like hot water spreading down his back. “What the hell kind of guardian just signs their ward off to some random organization?”

“I begged them to,” Steve said.

“What?”

“I just wanted out of there. I didn’t care much. All I knew was, they promised to help me with my problems and I hated it there.”

“Why would they let you go, though?”

“I may have tried to run away a couple of times. Got as far as far as Monticello once.”

“From Syracuse? How’d you manage that?”

“I kind of stole the station wagon.”

Bucky put his head in his hands and laughed. Steve just shrugged.

“There were other kids like me,” Steve said. “A lot, actually, over the years. Troublemakers like me. Homeless kids. Erskine was the first person—”

Steve stuttered and Bucky leaned in, putting his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve sighed, his shoulder heaving.

“He was the first person who said that it was wrong,” Steve said. “That I had a case. He was going to help me. And then they did this to him.”

“As opposed to going to court?” Bucky said. “Nobody does that unless there’s something bigger happening.”

Steve shrugged, but it was different this time. Exaggerated. His eyes going wide.

Lying. He was never good at it. Lousy, in fact. But nothing had been a lie until then. Bucky took his hand away and brushed his stubble with his palm.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “We have enough to start.”

“We do?” Steve said.

“Erskine got a little too close, and someone did him in. If that’s how it went down— _if_ —there’ll be something in the murder that gives it away. You said the cops said it was a robbery gone wrong. Could still have been that way.”

“I know what happened.”

Bucky ran his hand down his face. There wasn’t anything to mistrust, but something itched at his brain, the part that was trained to look as a cop, and the part that sensed danger as a soldier. But it was Steve. Whatever the danger was, it wasn’t from something Steve was trying to pull on him. He may not have seen the guy in years, but that didn’t change knowing the man practically his whole life.

“You don’t believe me,” Steve said.

“I didn’t say that,” Bucky said. “I’m just a careful guy. Look, I still have a guy in the department. I’m gonna pull the file, take a look at the details. I was a cop for a few years. I still have those instincts, you know? Trust me?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, small smile ghosting on his lips. “Just… whatever you find, please remember he was a decent man. He didn’t deserve any of this.”

“I know, Steve. I know.”

#

Bucky presented his PI license at the front desk. There was a chance he could get into the newer files without being noticed. His old stomping grounds weren’t that friendly anymore. Not hostile, just cold. And of course, there was always—

“Hey, asshole,” Sam’s voice chimed in from the bullpen.

Bucky stopped in his tracks, turned around, and met Sam Wilson with an apologetic grimace.

“Sir, if you could come this way,” said the officer who was escorting him.

“I got this,” Sam said. “If anybody else lets this guy loose in the records room he’ll cart it all out of here.”

“Hey, Sam,” Bucky said.

“Hey, yourself. What’re you doin’ on my turf, man?”

“Hi, Bucky,” Bucky said, sarcasm dripping out of his mouth. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s your sister? Aren’t you loving this weather?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

They kept in step with each other as they made their way down the hall. There were habits that a person picks up when they become someone’s partner. A rhythm to the walk, looking at each other to confirm they were thinking the same thing, anticipating the way the cases were unfolding. Bucky missed it. There weren’t many people in Bucky’s life that were so easy to share space with.

“Erskine?” Sam said. “I feel like I’ve heard that name.”

“It was recent,” Bucky said. “Two days ago. Guy’s already in the ground.”

“And it’s relevant to one of your cases?”

“Yeah. Remember that friend, of mine? Steve Rogers.”

“No. Never heard you mention him.”

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, knowing what was coming next. “Okay—”

“Steve and I used to be attached at the hip,” Sam said from memory. “I remember this one time my friend Steve, back in high school—”

“Okay, okay!”

“What about him?”

“He’s here. In New York.”

Sam stopped in the hall, turning to face him. “Your missing best friend? The one you wanted to start a gofundme for? That Steve Rogers?”

“Outta the blue,” Bucky said. “And this case? It’s for him. Erskine was a friend of his.”

“So, your pal Steve shows up in town the day after his friend is murdered, happens to find you, and gets you involved?”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Bucky could only spread his arms, hands still in his pockets. “Until I find out what’s really going on? I’m working the case.”

“You think that’s smart?” Sam asked

“I didn’t say it was smart, I said it was what I was going to do. It’s _Steve_.”

“Stuff like this is why I’m glad I’m working with someone else these days.”

“How’s Sharon anyway?”

“Professional.”

Sam opened the records room. Bucky made a bee-line for the open murder investigations. It wasn’t until he got messy and fumbled with the cataloging that he knew he was worked up over it.

He brought the file to the research table, not entirely sure what he was going to find. He could tell that he was working himself up and tried to calm his nerves by reminding himself of where he was and what he was doing.

Not entirely sure what he was going to find, he opened it. The top sheet had all of Erskine’s information—that he was a medical researcher, his age, that he was a naturalized American, originally from Germany.

The box that gave cause of death began to alarm him. _Exsanguination from multiple stab wounds_.

There was nothing that would come of delaying. He had to look at the pictures.

He’d seen dead bodies before, as a soldier, and as a cop. It was a thing that had normalized, which he tried not to think too hard about. But every once in a while, he would look at a body and a jolt would go through him. He could taste the copper in his own bloodstream.

Dread rolled through him like a rumble. He would have to show these images to Steve. He would have to show Steve his friend—this man he had described as decent and good—laid out on the thin sliver of linoleum of his kitchen floor, gore darkening his clothes and pooling around his body.

“Jesus,” Sam said.

“Don’t think He had much to do with it, Sam,” Bucky replied.

“This is brutal. Why does this read as a robbery gone wrong to the detective assigned to this? Whoever this is, he’s not new at this. There’s nothing that reads hesitation in any of this.”

“You’re right.”

“Something’s bugging me about this. I know it’s not my case and you’re still looking at it, but let me look into this tonight.”

“Be my guest. I just gotta get it back to my place.”

Sam glanced at the door, as if expecting it to open. He took a look at the details himself. Something gave him pause. A heavy sigh made him drop his shoulders. He shook his head and looked up, as if praying for patience.

“You know, technically I can’t let you take any information out of here unless you’re expressly working for an attorney,” Sam said.

“Of course not,” Bucky said.

“It’d compromise the Brooklyn PD. And I’d definitely not tell you that the guy working the Erskine murder will never figure out what happened on account of he’s a shitheel who got his promotion because of nepotism.”

“I would never ask you to give up information like that, Sam.”

“Good, because I definitely can’t tell you that the copier has been fixed but no one really knows about it, so anybody would have a good shot at getting some of that out of here without anybody noticing.”

#

Bucky parked in a spot near his apartment. The engine cut off and he put his hand on the door handle. He was muffled inside his car, nothing seeming to penetrate into his space. His legs were leaden. He had no will to get out. Steve was in his apartment, waiting for him, with not much to do but occupy himself with Netflix and the meager offerings of Bucky’s pantry. His backpack was sitting in the seat next to him like a guest that was lingering, unwelcome, for too long. He thought about what it contained. Those vivid images burned themselves into the back of his eyes. And that was him, who had never spoken to Erskine. This was Steve’s friend. A good friend, by the way he had been spoken about. Even Steve’s tone of voice told Bucky that this was an important figure in his life. And he was laid out in pictures in excruciating detail.

It took him an entire minute to get out of the car.

Electronic voices greeted Bucky as he unlocked his apartment door. They were even, conversational voices, and they came to an abrupt stop.

Steve came out of the living room to meet him in the hall. Gunpowder did the same and meowed his welcome.

“Were you listening to the radio?” Bucky asked.

“Podcasts,” Steve said with a shrug.

Bucky wrapped the moment around himself. For just a second, it felt like he was just coming home. No backpack full of gore and doom. Just a friend hanging out at his place, sharing the same space. Bucky crushed that moment underfoot. It was no use to pretend anything else was about to happen but what was happening.

Bucky walked into the living room and shrugged off his backpack and black leather coat. Steve watched him in silence, expectant. Standing in the middle of the darkened living room, he looked truly small.

“Steve, you might wanna sit down,” Bucky said.

Steve sat on the couch, which was still covered in the sheets that he had slept on. Bucky pulled up a chair and sat facing him. He pulled the folder out of his backpack and laid it on the coffee table. Steve’s eyes went to the folder, and then up to Bucky. Bucky kept thinking about how big those eyes were.

“This is Erskine’s case file,” Bucky said. “All the details are in there. The thing about details is, they’re never pretty. Everything is ugly under a microscope.”

“I can handle it.”

“Steve, these pictures—”

“I know. You don’t gotta worry about me.”

Steve’s fingers found the edges of the file folder. Bucky didn’t stop him, so he went on and flipped it open. Steve’s eyes skimmed the top page.

“All those wounds and in the end, it just says his blood ran out,” Steve said.

There was nothing Bucky could have said to soothe that hurt. They both steeled themselves for what would come next. Steve flipped the top page over and there was the first color photo-copy of the photographs. Steve exhaled and became very still. Then he closed the folder.

“No,” Steve said, almost inaudible.

Bucky leaned forward, ready to take back the file. “I shouldn’t have shown you this.”

Steve put his hand over the file folder. “No. I need to see this through.”

“You really don’t have to.”

“He was my friend. I don’t have a lot of those. I owe him so much. I have to find something. I have to find out who did this to him.”

Bucky nodded and took his hand away. Steve squared up to the file again and opened it. Bucky could see the strain on Steve’s face as he sifted through them, but he was steady. Steadier than anybody should have had to make themselves.

“Wait…,” Steve said.

Bucky perked up, leaning in. Steve held up an image, a detail photograph with a ruler next to it for scale. It was something on Erskine’s neck.

“What is that?” Bucky asked.

“It looks like an ‘x,’” Steve said. “And there are two little bumps at the ends of the lines. What is that?”

Bucky squinted. Then his eyes rounded with realization. Bucky leaned over to find something in the drawer at the end-table. He pulled out a small magnifier, the kind a jeweler might use. Bucky put his eye close to the photograph, leaning toward the meager light of his lamp.

“That’s a brand,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Steve said, voice tight.

“I’ve seen brands and burns before. The skin reacts just like this. It’s not a self-defense scratch or anything like that. Somebody marked him.”

Steve’s eyes were bug-wide when he locked gazes with Bucky.

“I would bet you hard cash money,” Bucky said. “That this is not the first time this guy’s marked someone. This is not just something you wake up one morning and decide to do.”

“Do you mean—are you talking about serial killers? Are you telling me a serial killer murdered Erskine?”

“We can’t jump the gun on that. The phrase gets bandied around too much. We don’t even know if there are any other victims.”

“Does that mean yes?”

“It means we’ve got to be careful before we go looking for this guy.”

“But what would a serial killer be doing going after a seventy-two year-old doctor? Does it have anything to do with HYDRA at all?”

Bucky was at a loss for words. Silence hung heavy in the air, expectant of an answer that wasn’t about to come right out of the blue. Steve fell back into the couch. Defeat sat on him like the weight of an elephant.

“It has to be connected to HYDRA,” Steve said. “It has to be.”

“Then we look for the connection,” Bucky said. “But not so hard that it’s the only possible answer.”

“How do we do that?”

Bucky took his phone out and opened his texts, scrolling until he found one Sam Wilson.

“We find out who else this guy has killed.”

“Okay, let’s get started,” Steve said.

“No. My friend Sam is going to get started. Us? We’re getting drinks.”

#

On a weekday, the bar was pretty quiet. Groups of friends were in their own corners, having come from work rather than out to meet people, for the most part. Steve and Bucky claimed a table tucked in a corner. It was actually quiet there, the sound muffled, and they didn’t have to shout to hear each other. They leaned in anyway, scooting their chairs closer together. Bucky’s knee gently pressed into Steve’s. Neither of them seemed to mind. Somewhere in the back of Bucky’s mind, he wondered if that was odd. But it was Steve, so perhaps not.

“I picked a bad time to come into your life, and I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“Don’t be sorry,” Bucky said. “You’re the one having a bad time.”

“It’s just I’m in your place and taking up all your time with— “

“We’re not talking about the case, or my job, or anything tonight, okay? We’re decompressing.”

Bucky nudged Steve. Steve smirked, slight and coy, and drank. They put their glasses on the table, almost synchronized.

“You come here often?” Steve asked.

“Is that a pick-up line?” Bucky teased.

Steve laughed through his nose and shook his head. “No, I mean—”

“I’ve been known to meet people here, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not really, I just—”

“I have a sex life, Steve, come on.”

Steve was starting to go red and he hid it behind another drink. Once he recollected himself he settled back into the corner booth they sat at. Bucky was still grinning at him, but Steve was obstinate and pretended not to see his face.

“You know, we have a lot of catching up to do,” Bucky said.

Steve shifted, like he was sitting on something uncomfortable. “My life’s not all that interesting.”

“Steve, you know that’s not true.”

“I mean, outside of staying off the radar of an evil corporation.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“It is.”

“You haven’t changed a bit. You used to say that about yourself back in the day, too.”

Steve seemed to shrink. It was clear he remembered that much about his past self and was trying to think of another way of being self-deprecating. But Bucky had a steady habit, one he knew he still had, of not letting Steve shit-talk himself. The knowledge of it between them hung in the air as Steve struggled and failed to get himself to say he wasn’t interesting again.

“I bet you still draw,” Bucky said. “I kept saying you should go to art school. Your hands were always black and gray.”

Steve’s eyes darkened. His face was slacker and he bit his lower lip, the way a person does when they feel tears coming on. He let his lip go and a shallow breath came out.

“I can’t remember the last time I picked up a pencil,” Steve said.

Something felt like it was cracking inside Bucky’s chest. Steve without art didn’t feel like Steve. It wasn’t that he was defined by it, but it was part of him, a pencil like an extension of his arm. Part of Steve seemed amputated at the thought of that missing piece. Just another one of those little pangs, pain being a signal that something was very wrong.

“What if I commissioned something from you?” Bucky said.

“Bucky,” Steve scolded.

“I’m serious. I pay well. I don’t have anything on my walls, and you could have a little cash.”

“Be serious, Bucky.”

Something about the way Steve said it, Bucky knew he was crossing a boundary. He couldn’t help himself. He had that instinct, the one that senses where a button was that was begging to be pushed. He leaned in closer, his knee touching Steve’s again.

“I still have some of your sketches,” Bucky confessed.

“Oh my god,” Steve said, head dropping into his hands. “Those have to be so _old_.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“They’re _old_. They probably suck.”

“You mean like paintings in a museum are old? So, like, Picasso sucks?”

“Shut up, that’s not what I meant.”

Alcohol met his embarrassment in a car crash of betraying body language. He was shifting and hiding, going pink, and averting his eyes. Then there was that smile, curving up and white, like a slice of the moon. Bucky stared at it with as much reverence as he gave the actual moon. He was smiling without really thinking about it, but Steve was smiling, too.

Steve turned and considered Bucky, eyes flicking over his body, never really reaching his face. Bucky wanted to reel back, like he had something on him, but he sat still, wondering what Steve was doing looking at him like a piece of meat.

Steve broke into a laugh, a private one aimed at a joke that remained in his head.

“Okay, this can no longer go unaddressed,” Steve said.

“What?” Bucky asked.

Steve grabbed Bucky by the bicep and gave it a good squeeze, before gesturing to it with incredulity. Bucky looked down at Steve’s large hands with its skinny fingers, but did nothing to remove his hands.

“When did this happen?” Steve asked.

It took Bucky an embarrassingly long time to realize what Steve was talking about. He sat in silence as his brain went blank. Then his face brightened and his brows shot up. He meant his muscles.

“Oh! Boxing happened. I picked up boxing.”

“But, like, you’re— “

Steve made the sign for ‘huge’ by flexing his arms.

Bucky laughed, surprised that he found himself bashful. “I’m not that big.”

“You got kinda big,” Steve insisted.

There was something about the way Steve said it—he shoved that down immediately. He took another swig of his beer, taking in the light, citrus drink. Maybe he was drinking too quick, he thought. That wasn’t the kind of thing he should be thinking about.

“I’m just more of a gym rat than I like to admit,” Bucky said. “It’s like when I ran track in school. Your muscles get wasted and when it’s all over you feel really good.”

“Sorry, can’t relate,” Steve said.

“That’s because you skipped PE to read in the bathroom. I know because I skipped chem sometimes to hang out with you.”

“Two gay kids hanging out in the bathroom near the gym. That sounds like a setup to a porno.”

Bucky choked on his beer. He was suddenly hot with embarrassment and the only thing he could think to do was shove Steve hard on the arm. Steve, knocked back pretty far, could only crack up, holding his belly, too silly with laughter to drink out of his own glass.

Bucky found himself leaning in close to Steve, their bodies pivoting closer together.

“I don’t think I would have survived high school without you,” Bucky said, laughter dying down to hems.

Steve’s brows ticked together, just for a moment. Confusion spread across his face and he searched Bucky for some clue. “What do you mean?” he said.

“It’s like you said,” Bucky replied. “Two gay kids hiding out in the bathroom.”

“Come on. You had friends besides me.”

“Yeah but nobody I liked enough that I’d risk detention to sit in the bathroom for an hour doing nothing. I don’t know… you got me, is all.”

“Got you?”

“Shut up. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t have to do any explaining for myself. I didn’t have to constantly come out. I didn’t have to cover up to seem cool. With you I was always myself.”

Steve smirked. “You acted cool around me, too.”

“Maybe that’s just ‘cause I’m cool.”

Steve snorted, trying to stifle his laugh. Bucky rolled his eyes and drank from his cup. There was an undercurrent of laughter that wouldn’t quite break through thin, closed lips and averting eyes.

Bucky considered that it was nice to not have to be cool for someone. Steve wasn’t ever impressed or intimidated, not by him. Something relaxed deep inside Bucky and he leaned back into the booth, some of the stiffness releasing from his spine.

Perhaps it was being relaxed, perhaps it was the beer, or maybe even a combination of the two, but a rush of heady bravery rushed through him. He stretched his arm out and wrapped it around Steve, pulling him to his side. Steve jumped at the touch, but relaxed into the strong hug. Steve’s hand snaked down around Bucky’s waist and he gave a slight tug to return the embrace. Steve pulled back his hand, but when Bucky pulled back, he left his arm dangling over Steve’s shoulder.

“You know why I acted like that around you?” Bucky said. “I always thought you were so cool.”

It came out of his mouth before he could think about it. He grinned, trying to make his utterance less serious, more like a casual observation.

“Come on,” Steve said.

“You were a brawler,” Bucky said. “You’d take on anything. You were a hundred pounds of fight.”

“You were the one who taught me how to fight.”

“Nah, I just showed you how to deck someone and not break your hand. I mean it, Steve, you were really…”

Some of Bucky’s beer spilled on his hand. Disappointed in himself he unhooked his arm from around Steve’s shoulder and put the beer back down on the table with both hands. He sucked as much beer off his hands as he could before wiping himself off with a napkin. Steve giggled by his side.

“Maybe I should cut myself off,” Bucky thought out loud. “I’m gettin’ a little…”

“Come on,” Steve said. “We’re drinking to a memory. We can’t stop now.”

The mention of the dead sobered Bucky a bit. Steadier, he took to the meaning of the night. It wasn’t just about them, though Bucky wanted to draw out as much about Steve as he could.

Bucky smiled, small and composed. “Alright. You’re right. To the memory.”

Steve held up his glass. “To Abe.”

Steve clinked his glass against Bucky’s, while Bucky tried to remember how many drinks down Steve was compared to him. He slugged the rest of his drink, deciding he wasn’t keeping score.

“What was he like?” Bucky asked. “I know you said he was kind, but what else?”

“Funny,” Steve said. “Kind of like how a grandpa is funny. I mean, I never knew mine, but that’s what I imagined it would be like. Not ‘quarters behind the ears’ funny, more like—he was just good-humored. Everything made him smile. It was infectious, too. Even when things were bad, he could still make you smile.”

“I bet I would’ve liked him.”

“You would have. He’d have liked you, too.”

Silence fell in respect, and the humming conversation and clinking glasses were all that filled that space. Steve took a drink, finishing his beer.

“You want another?” Bucky asked. He lifted his hand and made eye contact with the bartender.

A half an hour later, Bucky was officially Drunk. It had taken three more drinks to get there. Going out to get drunk was always something he did only when he was flush, and he was glad of the commission bonus from his last case, because he planned to stay drunk. It had been a while since he was that wonderfully light-headed.

 _Where you been?_ Bucky’s brain screamed, though his mouth wouldn’t form the words. Bucky had just enough self-control to see that it was going to become embarrassing if he started asking such direct questions. Steve couldn’t know about his several attempts to start a campaign to find him, each of them failing. He couldn’t know about trying to break into his sealed files at seventeen. He couldn’t know—

“Is it weird to be back?” Bucky asked Steve instead.

Steve shrugged. He hid behind another sip of his drink. Bucky narrowed his eyes. He needed to draw him out, but he didn’t want to act like a PI to do it. So instead he just shoved Steve with his elbow.

“It’s a little weird,” Steve admitted.

“Got too used to Chicago?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going back there?”

Steve shrugged. He had a long stare at nothing, like he was seeing something frightening in the ether. Bucky felt the words tumbling out even before he could think about what he was suggesting.

“You’re a Brooklyn boy,” Bucky said. “Stay in Brooklyn.”

“I can’t,” Steve said.

“Why not? The city change too much?”

“Maybe too expensive.”

“You’re telling me.”

“And a little too familiar.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, but it was soft, observant. “How is that bad?”

“You know—,” Steve tilted his hand back and forth.

“I don’t.”

Steve huffed. He rotated his glass in his hand as he collected his words.

“Some places, they’re like aches. The only way to get rid of them is to rub ‘em out. There’s this whole life that I could have had here if I’d—if things had been different. If my mom hadn’t died when she did, if I’d just been able to make it a year on my own, before turning eighteen. If I hadn’t been a ward of the state. I can’t think about that life. Jesus. What am I saying? That makes no kind of sense.”

Bucky felt his eyes go soft. He leaned harder on his palm, elbow on the table. “Makes a lot of sense.”

“Yeah?” Steve said with a cocked brow.

“Yeah. Makes me sad, though.”

“Why?”

“There’s really nothing for you here?”

Steve shrugged, glancing around the bar, as if looking for a distraction.

“Are you happy?” Bucky asked. “Doing whatever you’re doing, where you’re doing it.”

Bucky hadn’t expected himself to ask that question, but the beer went ahead and did it for him. But now that it was out in the air, Bucky really wanted an answer. It brought Steve’s attention back, eyes flitting to stare directly at Bucky over the rim of his drink.

“Happy?” Steve said. “I don’t really think about that. I figure—happiness is this weird thing. I got a few good memories. They’re usually a long time ago—lot of ‘em with you. When times get pretty dark I just kind of grab those and hang on.”

Bucky blinked and reeled back. “You think about me when you’re in a tough spot?”

Steve shrugged. “Yeah. We were best friends.”

 _Were_. That word hung in the air like a bad odor. Being something out of the past didn’t suit him, Bucky thought. But there was nothing he could do about the chasm of time. It had made the Grand Canyon, and it seemed it had set its sights on them, too.

Except Bucky didn’t feel like a past tense thing.

“If you move back to Brooklyn, we can pick up where we left off,” Bucky said.

“Where _did_ we leave off?” Steve asked.

Bucky had an image in his head that had never dimmed in intensity. It was a closed door. The door in his childhood apartment, and Steve was on the other side of it, walking away down the hall. Confusion grabbed at his seventeen year-old heart. He had wanted Steve back as soon as he walked away, even though he understood the reasons for him leaving.

Where Bucky wanted to pick up was to figure out that strain in his heart that came after the door shut, the one he hadn’t understood, and still didn’t.

“I don’t know,” Bucky admitted.

#

_Hey, Buck,_

_I’m sorry that it took me a little while to write. I’ve been settling down here, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be very permanent. There are five other kids here. They’re nice enough, but they keep their distance. Two of them are new. I guess this is where we go before we find someplace more permanent. They don’t have a computer we’re allowed to use, so it’ll have to be letters until I can start school and use the lab computers._

_I miss Brooklyn. I want to ask how everything is, but I know you’ll just say it’s the same. That’s good, I guess. I don’t want things to change too much until I get back. So, I’ll ask how’s your mom and Becca?_

_Syracuse kind of sucks. I don’t wanna knock it too bad, but the suburbs are something else. It’s really quiet. I don’t like it. It’s so quiet, when a car goes by at night it actually wakes me up. It feels like someone’s watching me sometimes, too, but maybe that’s just the seven other people in the house and I was just used to me, mom, and all my neighbors. Like, it was good noise in New York. Now it’s just silence._

_If that makes sense._

_Okay, this is going to make me sound like an asshole. I don’t want it to, but it will. I thought maybe I’d make even one friend in this house, maybe even on this block, but it’s just the same as it was everywhere else. I don’t know how you ever stood being my friend. Maybe it’s the way I look that keeps people from hanging out with me, or something. I think there’s something seriously wrong with me. And it makes me hate being here, when I should be giving these people a chance._

_The letters were a really good idea. I think I’m gonna keep this up. I feel a lot better, putting it all down._

_On the next page is my contact stuff. If I move, which I probably will, they’ll forward my mail until I send you my new address. I’ll start emailing you when the school year starts, but let’s try to keep this going. I still wanna get stuff from you. Maybe I can get a little money together and we can start sending packages. Too bad you can’t mail food. I miss your mom’s cooking. Seriously, they boil everything in this house._

_I really can’t wait to hear from you._

_Waitin’ on you now,_

_Steve_

#

_Dear Steve,_

_You’re an idiot._

_There’s nothing wrong with you. Do I have to go up to Syracuse and kick your ass? Because I will. I will get on a Greyhound bus and I’ll do it. There’s nothing wrong with the way you look, there’s nothing wrong with your brain, there’s nothing wrong with anything about you. Okay?_

_School’s not the same without you. Hodge won’t leave me alone for some reason, and the rest of his cronies don’t seem to know what to do without you to kick around. I think people aren’t used to seeing me without you. It’s like everybody’s radar is off. They don’t know where to throw the bombs, but they wanna throw ‘em._

_I hope this isn’t too short. I don’t know if I’m good at letter writing yet. I think it’ll be better than the phone or email, though. I like getting mail. And then we don’t have to hog the computer or the phone. Becca would be pissed. She’s always on them both. She has something called a blog. What the hell is a blog? I’ll tell you when I figure it out._

_Write me soon,_

_Bucky_

_P.S.: I don’t remember what I was going to write when I put ‘P.S.’ down so I guess I just miss you, man. Don’t let the bastards get you down._

#

Bucky squinted, even behind his glasses. The dark, tinted aviators did a lot to keep out the sun, but nowhere near enough. He pinched his brow as another wave of hangover hit him.

“You alright?” Steve asked.

The only sign that Steve had drunk the night before was a gravellier voice that strained now and again. Beyond that, he had woken up early and seemed bright, looking around the building and absorbing what had changed since they had hung out there in high school.

Bucky glared down at him. His glasses apparently didn’t do much to hide it because Steve reeled back slightly.

That was when Bucky spotted Sam coming in through the door. He turned to Steve and leaned down to whisper.

“If he doesn’t like you, don’t take it personally,” Bucky said. “I was his partner for years and I’m not even sure he likes me.”

“Well, I’ll try not to make a bad impression,” Steve said.

“That’s a good plan.”

“Why do they call him the Falcon?”

“Because Eagle-Eye wouldn’t stick.”

Sam came into the library holding a smoothie in his hand. He was definitely off-duty. There was no gun holster on his person and he wasn’t carrying his badge.

Bucky stood up from the bench near the entry and Steve followed suit.

“Sam,” Bucky said. “This is Steve Rogers. Steve, Sam Wilson.”

“Hi,” Steve said, standing up. They shook hands, firm and friendly.

“So, you’re the one all the fuss was about,” Sam said.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

“Did you bring the files?” Bucky interrupted.

Sam narrowed his eyes at Bucky. Bucky only hoped there was enough desperation in his face to shut down where Sam was about to go.

“You’re not gonna let me get acquainted?” Sam asked.

Bucky threw a hand up and leaned back in his chair. Sam moved forward and lifted his shades onto the top of his head. Steve’s brow was cocked, waiting to see what would happen next.

“You look like you could use a sandwich,” Sam said.

“A lot of people say that,” Steve said.

“Oh, really? Do you take their advice?”

“Only if they’re buying.”

Sam threw his head back and laughed, his hand on his stomach. Bucky’s brows came down. Something was happening but he hadn’t quite figured out what it was yet. He just knew he didn’t like it.

“How do you like it back in New York?” Sam asked.

“Well, I found out what the word ‘artisanal’ means, so that’s something,” Steve replied.

“Alright. Stick around for a while, we’ll get you acquainted with the new Brooklyn.”

“You’re from New Orleans,” Bucky pointed out.

“Don’t mind Bucky,” Steve said. “He’s still mad he was born in Iowa.”

“Where you been keeping this kid, Barnes?” Sam asked.

Bucky squinted, his face near-livid. He threw up his hands as if to say, “the _fuck_ , Wilson?”

Sam turned on his back-to-business face and reached inside his jacket.  The manila envelope file bulged the accordion sides.

“I can officially give these to you, since they’re cold files,” Sam said. “Not open investigations. I looked for the commonalities. If anybody’s noticed that this is the same guy, they don’t care enough to put it together. You guys found yourself a serial killer.”

“Why wouldn’t anybody have noticed?” Steve asked.

“Because Barnes was right. It’s an escalation. I’m not even sure about the first few, chronologically, but I included them in case it sticks. The branding starts on the third victim and goes on from there.”

“How many victims?” Bucky asked.

“I found at least eight.”

Bucky’s eyes bulged. He picked up the folder and opened it, flipping through it without pulling any of the paper out. “We didn’t find a serial killer, Sam. You did. This is intense work. You found all this in a night?”

Sam shrugged. “It got under my skin.”

“Thank you,” Steve said.

“Hey,” Sam said. “If it helps us catch a serial killer that nobody noticed. I’ll gladly miss a night of sleep. And I don’t care about the credit.”

“We’re not looking for that, either,” Steve said. “I just want to find whoever did this.”

Sam nodded. “Then let’s go somewhere more private.”

#

Bucky had rented the study room for two hours. It was a quiet room with only a small window so they were unlikely to be interrupted unless someone was very determined to peek at them. The accordion envelope lay in the center of the dark table, untouched and awaiting what would happen next.

“You know,” Steve said. “When I started my week, I didn’t think there would be this many dead bodies in my future.”

“If you want to take a breather—,” Bucky said.

Steve pulled the envelope toward him, unlooped the elastic and pulled the sections of folders out. Sam had put them together chronologically, so they were easy to put into two neat rows of four. Then Bucky went into his backpack and pulled Erskine’s file, putting it in its own row at the bottom.

“Sorya Jones, thirty-three,” Sam began. “Stabbed twice in the abdomen; Doug Paulson, twenty-eight, stabbed five times; Arin Sawyer, twenty-two, stabbed six times; Meagan Pines, twenty-five, stabbed, throat slashed, branded with an ‘x’ shape with dots at the ends of the lines; Michael Harbor, forty-eight, disemboweled, branded; Joe North eighty-eight, smothered, throat slashed, branded; Mary Sheathe, fifty-five, disemboweled, branded; and Carl Merriweather, thirty-seven, organs removed, throat slashed, branded.”

“Abraham Erskine,” Bucky said. “Seventy-two. Stabbed to death, branded. Nine victims.”

“That we know of,” Steve added.

With the information spread out in front of them in sections or morbid photographs and detailed documents, it was easier to see the larger picture. What was unfortunate was taking the pieces of people’s lives and turning them into data. It wasn’t a pretty process, but it was how things got done.

“Is it just me?” Steve said. “Or do these people not have a lot in common?”

“Are you a cop?” Sam asked. “Because you have to tell me if you’re a cop.”

That elicited the smallest of smirks from Steve.

Bucky narrowed his eyes for just a moment. It wasn’t just that Steve was learning quickly. He’d been a smart kid, who’d probably have gone further and gotten better grades if he’d just stopped doodling in class. It was that the images were bearable to him now, and he was thinking like an investigator already. Bucky felt a pang of responsibility for that. He could have closed him out of the investigation, told him to keep to himself while he did the work. He hadn’t. There was too much value in staying close to Steve in order to find out what else there was that Bucky couldn’t yet see. He just wished Steve hadn’t acclimatized to the sight of death so quickly.

“You’re right,” Bucky said. “Different races, ages, genders, jobs, income brackets—they’re all in New York, but not in the same location. This guy was a climber at a law firm, and this guy was a janitor. These girls look nothing alike. And who would target in an age range this broad?”

Steve made his mouth a thin line. “What if it’s not about any of that?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“When I asked Bucky to look into this, I was sure I knew who did this. I just needed the evidence.”

“Who was that?” Sam asked.

“There’s an organization that Erskine was looking into,” Steve said. “They were called HYDRA. They’re guilty of serious medical malpractice. On minors. He was close to exposing them. I figured… I figured it must have been a hit. Then this happens.”

Sam scanned the files, narrowing his eyes and studying things in chunks.

“I don’t know about HYDRA,” Sam said. “But if you suspected a hit—”

“That would explain the lack of commonalities,” Bucky offered.

“Exactly,” Sam said. “What if it’s not something they all are? What if it’s something they’ve done? Or had done to them? Look, Joe North, the climber—they suspected someone who was a competitor but couldn’t make it stick. And here, Michael Harbor, they figured the wife for it but she was out of town with a solid alibi. It’s the same all over the place. I studied these backwards and forwards last night and I can tell you, there are strong suspects with motives but no means or opportunity.”

“That doesn’t sound like a serial killer,” Bucky said. “That sounds more like—”

“A hitman,” Sam finished.

Bucky’s eyes went wide. He shuffled back through the folders for something, scrambling in urgency.

“You’re right,” Bucky said. “Holy crap, you’re right. But hitmen don’t act like this. They’re clean, efficient. They don’t make a scene like this.”

“Well, that’s what we’re looking for,” Sam said. “It’s a hitman who’s turned baby serial killer. He’d be doing this anyway, but this way he gets paid.”

“Why would HYDRA hire someone this brutal to take out Erskine?” Steve asked.

“Only two reasons to do that,” Sam said. “They didn’t know who they were hiring, or they were sending a message.”

Steve huffed, his shoulders going into a straight line. It had been a long time since Bucky had seen that kind of anger in Steve’s face, and it was one part exhilarating and one part terrifying. The vigor that went through Bucky was almost foreign, after so long. It was enough like a memory to slide into place with familiarity. Steve had that effect on him, always had. Before, it had been about minor injustices, and the unfairness of the world from the perspective of a high school kid. Bucky wished now it could be about something lighter. Anything else.

“If there’s a conspiracy,” Sam said. “We’ve got to be airtight. Jump the gun, and all the parties scatter.”

“So how do we make it stick?” Steve asked.

“Let’s figure out if we’re even right yet,” Bucky said.

“We have to be right,” Steve said. “Nothing else makes sense.”

“Nothing makes sense from where we’re standing. I’ll tell you Barnes’ First Law of Investigation—“

“Barnes’ First Law?” Sam asked.

“It states that the likelihood that there’s something big we don’t know about yet is at a hundred percent.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“Well, I had to have made it up sometime.”

“You really didn’t.”

Something was off about the mote of fear in Steve’s eyes. That instinct poked at Bucky again, the feeling that he didn’t have the whole story. All the same, he knew that if he reached for it then, it would disappear between his fingers like smoke.

“Division of labor,” Bucky said. “Sam, you take the murders, make sure we have all the victims. As soon as we catch the guy we need to be able to say for sure they’re all his victims. We’ll get all the information about HYDRA we can and see if it fits Erskine in particular. We’ll meet back here when we have something.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Sam said. “You know, I don’t know much about the HYDRA, or whatever, but if it helps with the conspiracy angle, I’d like a report.”

“I can type one up for you, once I get Steve to help me out with that.”

Steve smiled and nodded, but he also looked a little sick.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Let’s hunt us a serial killer.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Bucky,_

_I don’t want to put this in an email. It needs to go on paper. I’m sick. I’m real sick. I think it’s getting worse. They took me to this doctor, but he was just a general guy, and when I told him about my conditions he barely seemed like he was listening. I told him that new stuff is happening, but he didn’t check anything. He just sent me home and told me to tell him if anything changes. I can’t get anyone to listen. I wake up in the middle of the night because my breath is so shallow. I’m falling asleep in class until one in the afternoon. I’m just tired. I lost my appetite. If Tomi and Carl care, they don’t show it. They’ve missed picking up my prescriptions twice now, and my stuff doesn’t really have that big of a half-life. They ignore me all day, and don’t even check to see how I’m doing on my homework. Sometimes at night Carl just hovers in the hallway for no reason at all and it creeps me out._

_Thanks for letting me dump this somewhere. I feel a lot better. Don’t make a big deal out of this. I’m gonna be okay._

_Miss you,_

_Steve_

#

_from: s.rogers.93@aol.com_

_to: brooklynbarnes92@hotmail.com_

_subject: (no subject)_

_I think I figured out a way to get healthy and get out of this place. I’ll let you know. I’m sorry I sent you that letter. You shouldn’t have to know all that stuff. That’s on me._

_Don’t worry. I’ve got it figured out._

_-Steve_

#

_from: brooklynbarnes92@hotmail.com_

_to: s.rogers.93@aol.com_

_subject: talk to me re: (no subject)_

_why didn’t you say any of this before idiot? if its that bad lets get you home. i'm done with those assholes youre gonna be 18 in july and you can do whatever you want but until then i'll get mom to work something out. you need to see a doctor. we'll get you what ever you need. just come home. you were supposed to live with us. this is bullshit._

_call me if you can. i won’t get you in trouble by calling first. please. call._

_====_

_Bucky_

#

Steve was rubbing his arm, and Bucky could recognize a nervous tick in anybody, even if it weren’t someone he’d known since he was seven. Bucky shut the door to the apartment and he could hear Gunpowder. Steve picked up the cat and held it close to his chest.

“We’re alone now,” Bucky said. “You can spill it.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked, his voice unconvincing.

“Whatever it is that you’re not telling me. I get not saying it in front of Sam—he’s a trustworthy guy, but you don’t know him. But you know me, Steve.”

“It’s been a long time since high school, Buck.”

“Not that much has changed.”

“Well, I have.”

Bucky’s mouth became a thin, crooked line as he sucked in his cheeks. Looking at Steve, having spent the last few days with him, he knew that wasn’t true. He was still the same stubborn, pig-headed Steve Rogers who would swing at anything, no matter the size.

“Bullshit,” Bucky said.

“How about you?” Steve asked. “How much have you changed? You don’t even look the same. You’ve been to war. You’ve been a cop. That changes people.”

“I’m not different. Just more grown up. I mean, think about it. Why do you think I stopped everything I was doing to help you out? What do you think I’m getting out of this? Because for me it’s nothing but trouble. The investigating we’re doing is borderline illegal. And you think I’m doing this for what? My health? For better or worse, I’m still Bucky. I’m just rounded out.”

Steve looked down to the ground. He gently set the cat down. Whatever was going on behind his eyes was firing rapidly.

Steve grabbed one of his bags—the small, heavy duffel that Bucky had dragged up three flights of stairs. Steve exhaled as his hand hovered over the zipper.

“There’s no going back after this,” Steve said. “You’ve got to know that. Once you’re in it, you’re in it.”

“Steve,” Bucky said. “I was in it when you called me.”

Something flashed deep in Steve’s eyes, but it was too quick for Bucky to figure out. Steve unzipped the duffel.

Out came what was probably the crappiest laptop Bucky had seen in years. It had to be five years old. The screen was detached in one corner and it was covered in stickers. It was an old black brick. Bucky’s eyes darted to his brand new MacBook and guilt ribbed him, though he couldn’t quite figure out why.

Underneath the laptop were file envelopes. No wonder it had been so heavy—it had to be reams and reams of paper. There were zipper pouches with what Bucky realized were USB drives, and crushed and battered notebooks.

 

 

 

“This is all I have,” Steve said. “It took me a long time to collect it. Some of it might be useless, but it’s something to work with.”

“What is all this?” Bucky asked.

Steve chose an envelope and opened it. He reached into one of the dividers and pulled out a thin file. His arm stretched out, but as if he were handing trust itself over to Bucky. Bucky took the file folder in a delicate grasp and locked eyes with Steve. There was a pleading there, some kind of wound that was about to be opened. With delicate fingers, he opened the folder.

The classified stamp was a light gray in the photocopy. A chill ran up his spine. Whatever he was holding in his hand, he wasn’t supposed to have it. It meant it was copied directly from an original which was never meant to be reproduced. Nothing had been redacted. It was patient forms, medical history, current immunizations, medications and treatments, the names of which he couldn’t pronounce let alone contextualize.

It was the images that made him jump in his skin.

Something was wrong with the girl in the picture. It helped that there was another image of her, brighter, more alive, to compare it to. It also made it hurt more to know that the fresh-faced nineteen year-old was timestamped five months before the sallow, ashen girl that stared into the camera with haunted eyes.

He flipped through more. Bucky wasn’t a doctor, or a scientist, but he recognized experiments when he saw them. Test results, raw data, instructions—not just for treatment, but for patient restraint.

“What the hell is this?” Bucky asked, looking up from the file.

Steve pulled out another file and another. Bucky sat down on the floor across from Steve and began sorting through them. Kids, between sixteen and twenty-one. All of them changing into sallow creatures, some of them presenting side-effects that went from mild to life-threatening.

“Seriously. Steve. What is this?”

“This is HYDRA,” Steve said. “This is what they did to us.”

“I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Are you telling me—is this human experimentation? Steve, you can’t be serious.”

Steve’s jaw set. He shrugged out of his jacket and reached behind his neck. Before Bucky could ask what he was doing, Steve pulled his shirt over his head. He cradled the shirt in front of his chest, as if bashful. Then he let it drop. Bucky’s eyes were wide as he stared at the sight in front of him.

There were at least a dozen surgical scars on his chest. Some looked small, like non-invasive tube surgeries. Others were long sickles or lines that had to be from serious procedures.

“I’ve had twenty-two procedures,” Steve said. Then he turned and showed his back, where there were more scars, and a series of dots going down his spines. “I’m not counting the spinal taps. I lost track of those. Then there were the medications, the serums, being bombarded with radiation. Are you getting this yet?”

Bucky’s breath was still in his throat. He couldn’t take his eyes off the marks. There was no reason for Steve to lie. The files he held in his hand had come from _somewhere_. Something would not quite sink in. His brain was perhaps trying to protect him from the further horrors that the evidence only began to hint at.

“Someone would have noticed,” Bucky said. “All these kids—This is not just malpractice. Why didn’t anybody do anything?”

“Homeless and delinquent youth, remember?”

Bucky’s stomach did a somersault. “But someone would have noticed something.”

“How long do you think those people lasted? People disappear all the time. I did.”

Bucky had to take a sharp inhale, or he was going to start getting really upset.

“Nobody was trying to stop this?” he asked.

“What do you think Erskine was doing?” Steve said. “And you saw what happened to him. Why do you think I’ve been living off the grid, Bucky? Why do you think I’m not on facebook or renting an apartment in the city I grew up in like a normal person? These are powerful people. I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist but _look at me_.”

Bucky’s jaw tightened. He laid his hand on a folder that said ‘Q-Z.’

“Are you in here?” Bucky asked.

Steve slipped his hole-pocked tee back over his head. He sorted through the file folder, going back into the Rs.

A file came out that said ‘Rogers, Steven G.’ on the front. Steve had shoved himself in there, just another piece of raw data in the whole of it.

Steve sat cross-legged, the file on his lap. For a moment Bucky considered taking it back, letting Steve have what little privacy he had left. With a reluctant hand, Steve handed the file folder to Bucky. Bucky took it and sighed.

 “I’m gonna make you a promise,” Bucky said.

“What’s that?” Steve asked.

“Whatever is in here, it’s not going to change the way I look at you.”

“Yeah, it will.”

The conviction on Steve’s face was absolute.

Bucky opened the file. The first thing that unfolded were the pictures.

They were taken in several months’ worth of intervals. His eyes held less light and became more matte. In profile, he could see some of the physical side-effect—they manifested in his posture, in lesions and rashes, and blank stares. In some of the pictures he could see the restraints that held him, straps shoving his shoulders down, or wrist cuffs keeping him to the bed. Then there was the last chronological picture.

Steve had been thin before, but this was skeletal. His eyes were open a sliver, light cast inside it, but hollow. He would have been corpse-like but for the fact that Bucky knew damn well what a corpse looked like and there was still life clinging to Steve.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought Steve’s chart was thicker than the others. The battery of tests and experiments were extensive. Something called the SS serum. “Corrective” surgeries and their outcomes. And Bucky didn’t know what gamma radiation or Vita-Rays were, but it was radiation, and that couldn’t be good.

“Holy hell, Steve,” Bucky said.

“I told you,” Steve said.

Bucky let the file drop and hang from his hands. “God damn it, Steve. Will you give me five seconds to process this before you give me a hard time?”

Bucky only knew he looked shell-shocked because of Steve’s face. It mirrored him in some way, eyes shaking, mouth parted, shallow of breath. Steve scanned his body and slowly leaned back. Bucky hadn’t realized he was crunching the documents in his hands in a shaking fist. He had to relax his palm, fold the documents closed and set them on the floor. He brushed his hair back onto his head and stared off into the distance.

“How long?” Bucky asked.

“How long?” Steve echoed.

“How long did they have you?”

Steve paused, chewing on the taste of the moment. “Five years.”

“ _Five_? You survived this for five years?”

From the look on Steve’s face, it could have been the first time anybody had said that phrase back to him. He looked down at the floor, nodding.

“How are you alive?” Bucky asked.

Steve’s brows ticked together. “I don’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t have survived this. Steve, how did you get out?”

“Erskine.”

It was like a spear to the ribs. There was a man who was responsible for his dearest friend’s rescue and he would never get the chance to tell him just what it meant to him. He couldn’t tell Erskine to his face just how grateful he was to this dead, good man. But then, there were other ways to pay debts.

“I won’t ask more than what’s in these files, okay?” Bucky said. “Can I trust you to tell me if there is something else I need to know about?”

Steve nodded in silence for a few seconds before saying, “Yes.”

Bucky reached out and grabbed Steve by the shoulder. Steve stiffened up for a moment before loosening into Bucky’s comforting grip. They locked eyes again, Bucky lowering his head to really keep Steve’s eyes on him.

“No more secrets, okay?” Bucky said.

Something dark passed over Steve’s face. He swallowed hard before nodding.

“No more secrets,” Steve agreed.

#

_Bucky picked at his fingers. Steve watched him work at his nails with narrowed eyes before he looked Bucky up and down. The rain was coming down hard against the window, and the gloomy overcast made the science classroom oppressive. The lights were off and they liked it that way. Fluorescence made things harsh. They sat on the counter near the washing station, legs dangling off the edge. For a little while it felt like they were getting away with murder. Teenagers on the counters and tables were a big no for Mr. Mallory, so they did it whenever they could._

_“Are you okay?” Steve asked._

_Bucky exhaled, puffing his cheeks out. It took him a while to speak, but Steve let him take his time._

_“I have to tell you something,” Bucky said. “I’m—I’m really scared.”_

_“About what?” Steve asked._

_“About what you’ll say. That you won’t be my friend. That you’ll hate me.”_

_“Come on. Buck. Why wouldn’t I be your friend?”_

_Bucky’s heel tapped on the cabinet under their seats. “Okay. Really. You can’t get mad at me or nothin’. God, this is hard. Okay. Um. The thing is. I just kinda have been working this out. I don’t know how else to say it so I’m just gonna say it. I, um—I’m gay. Okay. I said it.”_

_Bucky couldn’t look at him. He stared at the ground. The pattern on the linoleum was suddenly extremely fascinating and it was all he could think about._

_“You’re kidding me,” Steve said._

_That wasn’t what Bucky was expecting. Then again, he didn’t know what he expected._

_“What?” Bucky asked._

_Steve’s eyes were wide, his hands open. And then his face burst into a laugh. Bucky reeled back, not knowing what it meant._

_“Me too!” Steve said._

_A jolt went through Bucky. It wasn’t just the words, but the genuine joy on Steve’s face. Bucky was too shocked to smile, but he was bursting from within. His hands shook. For the life of him, he didn’t know what to do with his hands._

_“You—” Bucky began._

_“I’m gay,” Steve whispered. “We’re both gay, Buck. I swear, we’re the same person, sometimes.”_

_That huge, trembling excitement made him puff his chest out and blink a million times._

_“I thought you were going to hate me,” Bucky croaked._

_“Bucky!” Steve admonished._

_“Oh my god.”_

_Bucky wrapped his arms around his best friend, close enough that he buried his face in Steve’s shirt. He wasn’t crying, not quite, but his lashes were wet enough to soak into Steve’s shirt. They broke apart and Bucky pushed the moisture out of his eyes as quick as he could._

_“I tried telling you,” Steve said. “About a million times.”_

_“Why didn’t you?”_

_“…I thought you would hate me, too.”_

_Bucky tried, and failed, to imagine a world where he hated Steve Rogers. It wouldn’t take form._

_“You know what?” Steve said._

_“What?” Bucky asked._

_“We should get ice cream.”_

_Bucky blinked, his brows coming low. His mouth flapped open for a little while as he tried to think. He was out of the loop on a lot of stuff that came with being gay. All he knew was he liked boys and he wanted Steve to know. He didn’t know there would be ice cream._

_“We have English next period,” Bucky said._

_“So?” Steve said._

_“We could get in trouble, Steve. They’ll call my mom.”_

_“They’ll call my mom, too. It’s no big deal.”_

_“What’ll we tell them?”_

_“Just say you weren’t feeling good.”_

_“That’s not gonna work.”_

_Steve hopped down from the counter and grabbed Bucky’s hand. He pulled until Bucky hopped off the counter and Steve began to drag him out of the darkened classroom. Steve smiled and that’s all it took. Steve didn’t have to pull anymore, because Bucky was following. Bucky still had that screwed-up feeling in his stomach at the prospect of getting in trouble. But with Steve’s sure grin, he followed the smaller boy out of the room, down the hall, and hit the pavement running before anybody could see them._

_He bought two scoops of rocky road with the money he had brought for lunch. Then he puts sprinkles on it just because he wanted them and he never felt he could justify the extra junk food. Steve had bought sherbet, like usual, and the raspberry looked sweet and inviting._

_“So,” Steve said. “What kind of boys do you like?”_

_Bucky flushed and looked around him, as if someone could overhear them, but nobody else was in the shop. Bucky scooted his chair closer to the table, though, just in case. He licked at his ice cream._

_“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “I don’t think about it. Just boys, I guess. I get a lot of crushes and stuff. I dunno if they have anything in common. Maybe I don’t have a type.”_

_“I do,” Steve said, voice suddenly low._

_“You do?”_

_Steve shrugged and ate some of his sherbet with a spoon. Bucky could tell Steve was tapping his foot nervously in the air._

_“Steve?”_

_“Beefy guys.”_

_Bucky’s eyes went wide and he put his hand over his mouth to keep the ice cream in. “Oh my god, Steve!”_

_“You know, like,” and Steve put his arms out to mime broad shoulders. “Did you see Pitch Black?”_

_“Like, Vin Diesel? He’s huge! Steve!”_

_Steve cackled and fell back in his chair. Bucky was laughing without thinking about it and was suddenly scared he was going to drop his ice cream._

_The laughter died down and they ate in silence for a little while. There was a lot to say, but they had the whole rest of the day, until they would have to go back home and avoid the topic of missed classes, if they could._

_“It’s nice to not feel so alone,” Steve said._

_A calm went through Bucky’s body. He gazed at his ice cream, wishing a little bit that he had put it in a bowl instead of a cone. He was a little boneless, like when he did track for gym class and his body was all spent and everything felt good and floaty._

_“You were never alone,” Bucky said. “Even if I wasn’t… I still would’ve been your friend.”_

_“Me too,” Steve said._

_“Let’s not keep anything from each other anymore. Okay?”_

_“Okay.”_

_“It’s just that it was stupid feeling alone and I hated it and now we’re having ice cream and it didn’t have to be so hard.”_

_Steve smirked and some of his hair fell into his face. It always managed to do that just when Steve needed to hide a little bit._

_“This sounds stupid, but,” Steve began. “I don’t feel like I can trust a lot of people. At least, not with personal stuff. You’re my best friend, Bucky. I’d tell you anything. Promise we’ll never keep secrets from each other again?”_

_“I promise.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Yeah. You’re my best friend, too. Promise.”_

_Bucky put his pinky out. Steve smiled, hunching his shoulders. He grabbed Bucky’s pinky and they pulled, hard, smiling as their fingers locked together._


	5. Chapter 5

Steve held out an old magazine. It was curled and bent in the corners, the stapling coming undone in the spine. When Bucky took it, it easily curled open to a page in the center of the magazine, where an unopened pack of chopsticks marked a place. A sliver of an article, just one column running the length of the page next to a three-fourths advertisement, had a headline that was circled in black ink. Above the article was a small illustration of an empty hospital bed with messy sheets. He checked the cover. It was from a few years back. It was the sort of article Bucky might have skimmed, if the byline didn’t catch his attention. Looking at the sad illustration, Bucky began to feel forlorn.

“Read it,” Steve asked.

Bucky gave Steve a skeptical glance, but sat down in his side chair to read.

#

**The Many-Headed HYDRA**

How one company has gotten away with murder via the power of rebranding.

Jasper Sitwell | April 9, 2015 | Science

(Note: all names have been changed for privacy.)

It’s not often that a warzone would be preferable to the care of doctors in the United States. When you compare the treatment that Leo, lately of war-torn Sokovia, received at the now defunct Homeless Youth and Delinquent Rehabilitation Association (HYRDA), bombs seem, at least, less cold.

“We thought we were there to get treatment,” Leo recounts. “By the time we realized we were locked in the wards, it was too late.”

Leo only agrees to speak about it under the guise of anonymity, in a McDonalds in a different city from the one in which he shares a squat with three other escapees. “Whatever is inside us, they will want it back. If not that, then they will want our silence. The only way they can insure that is death.”

Leo’s accounting of what happened to him is the stuff of pulpy genre fiction. Dozens of children, some homeless and some in the foster system, enrolled in the program in the 2010s. Many of these children were chronically ill, symptoms ranging from mild to life-threatening. The promised treatment turned out to be procedures carried out against their wills. The details are brutal. Spinal taps by the dozens. Surgeries that leave the patients crippled instead of healed. He even describes long periods of neglect where they were left without human interaction as he healed from recent surgery. Leo points to scars as part of his proof, but that isn’t at all the only evidence he has.

Rebranding is something that, by now, is familiar to most. The same technique that can turn a failing deodorant brand like Old Spice into a viral sensation can also have the effect of making the public forget past sins. The second is hardest to pull off. In 2007, after major human rights violations tarred the name ‘Blackwater,’ the company rebranded as ‘Xe.’ The intended effect was to create a brand with “no connotations” to the former name. The name ‘Blackwater’ persists when referring to the company and the public isn’t fooled. The company remains maligned and associated with some of the worst abuses in the Iraqi war.

HYDRA found a way around this common blunder by not even letting people know they’ve become a new company. Twice.

In 2012, HYDRA became Red Room, moving away from its mission as a medical youth program and into its role as a medical research organization. It was more honest in its goals, but without revealing where its medical research was coming from.

It was in 2015 that they became the organization they are today. Tesseract is a fledgling bio-medical research firm, seeming to have taken whatever they had learned through HYDRA and Red Room and putting it to use in manufacturing medicines and surgical prototypes. It was in those facilities, Leo claims, that things finally relaxed enough that fifteen patients escaped.

The paper trail between these two companies are thin, but existent. Little attention has been brought to it, since the rebranding and restructuring hasn’t come with any scandal or malpractice—yet. However, with the current growth and visibility of Tesseract, it remains to be seen if this corporation can hide the true origins of its success.

When asked about the possibility of ongoing experimentations, Leo’s face becomes grave. “We left many behind. Many more ‘disappeared’ before we escaped. They will bring in more kids. This will go on until it is stopped. They are out there, and they are suffering. I think about them every day.”

#

“This should be a huge expose,” Bucky said. “Why is it one five-hundred-word column in the middle of the magazine? And why haven’t I ever heard of this? Someone would have brought this nationwide.”

“Would they?” Steve said.

“Steve, yes. Of course. This is abused kids and illegal experimentation.”

“People get lost in the system. Information gets hard to track. Trails go cold. What do you think happened to the guy who wrote the article?”

“Is he still writing?”

“No. Tesseract sued him for libel. They won. Do you think anybody publishes his articles anymore?”

Bucky’s jaw set. He tapped the magazine against his hand as he thought.

“I gotta look him up,” Bucky said. “If I can get him on the phone maybe there’s something else he’s got, something he held back in the article.”

“He lives in Queens,” Steve said.

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “You just _know_ that?”

Steve shrugged. “I looked him up. He’s been there for a while. I’ve wanted to talk to him but—”

“But?”

“But there was no one to have my back.”

Bucky tilted his head to the side and stared at Steve. The chasm of time made itself known again. There was a great want deep in the center of Bucky’s being that yearned for the years back that could have been if Steve had only just _asked_.

“Get your jacket,” Bucky said.

Steve’s eyes bulged. “Right now?”

“Right now.”

Steve scrambled and began to put his illegal documents in the duffel.

“We’re not leaving those just lying around,” Bucky said, going into the closet by the bathroom. He opened it and there was a large metal locker inside. Steve reeled back when Bucky opened it and realized it was a gun locker.

“What?” Bucky said. “I go shooting sometimes.”

They piled the folders, the drives, the magazine, and Steve’s laptop into the shelf above the rifles and locked the door.

#

The house in Queens was pretty run-down. It could have been nice, if someone would fix the overhang on the porch, give it a fresh coat of paint, and maybe cut the grass. As it was, the overgrown, rotting, slumping house sat in the middle of the block like it was hiding from the world.

Steve stared out at it as he sat in Bucky’s car, parked across the street from the house. It was clear how bad his nerves were. Even his knee was bouncing and he rubbed his hands together.

“Well,” Bucky said. “Let’s say hello.”

They knocked on the door. For a while, they thought maybe they had come at the wrong time of day. Then they heard something shift and fall, followed by a curse. The door was pulled open and a small, thin man wearing glasses glared out at them. He wore a vest over a shirt, but it was pulled sideways and his shirt was wrinkled. The man shifted his glasses better onto his face and glared at them. Bucky realized, with some horror, that they had just woken him from a nap.

“Yeah?” said the man behind the door.

“Jasper Sitwell?” Steve asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name’s James Barnes,” Bucky said. “I’m a private investigator. This is my associate, Steve Rogers. We’re here about an article you wrote in two-thousand—“

The door slammed in their face. The force of it blew their hair back. Steve had to push back his bangs. Bucky sighed, closed his eyes, and knocked on the door again.

“You can go through my lawyer if you want a statement,” came Sitwell’s voice from behind the door.

“Sir—,” Bucky tried.

“Not interested.”

“HYDRA held me captive for five years,” Steve said. “You were right about them. I can help you prove it.”

First, nothing, as a pause stretched. Shuffling again, something falling over and being kicked aside. The door opened slowly. Sitwell peeked through the crack.

His eyes were on Steve. Steve’s face was set, jaw immovable, but Bucky could see the coiled nerves underneath, the fear that was probably making his toes curl. Sitwell opened the door wider.

“You probably need some tea,” Sitwell said.

The house was musty and stuffed with document boxes, but it couldn’t exactly be called messy. There was a strange order underneath everything, and where there was a surface like a coffee table or a couch it was clean, coasters set out for drinks, the wood polished, and nothing cluttering the surface.

Bucky wasn’t really a tea person, but he took the steaming mug that Sitwell offered him. Steve did the same. Sitwell settled into his musty orange couch while Steve and Bucky sat across from him in hard wooden chairs.

“I thought a lot more of you kids were going to come forward,” Sitwell said. “Not that I’m saying it’s your fault, but—”

“I know,” Steve said with a nod.

“That’s why you published too early, isn’t it?” Bucky said. “You were counting on it all coming out.”

“James, was it?” Sitwell asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t talk to you until I know what you are to him.”

“He’s a friend,” Steve promised. “Not just a PI. I didn’t randomly hire him. He can be trusted.”

“Can he?”

“I trust him with my life.”

Something thrilled up Bucky’s spine. He held on tighter to the hot mug to keep himself still.

“I’d ask about you, too, but,” Sitwell said, rubbing his day-old stubble with his hand. “You all have a look to you. I would describe it, but I think you know.”

Steve’s sudden stiffness spoke volumes. Bucky watched Steve’s eyes shift, shivering a little, his breath shaking. Bucky had the urge to reach out and steady him with a touch. In addition to it not being the place or the time, he wondered why he so badly wanted the excuse to comfort with touch.

“You should know,” Sitwell said. “My sources went dry. I think some of them might have been plants to throw me off their trail, or to give me bad info. The rest of them just knew I was salted earth. Now I’m a libelous journalist living off my life savings. No one wants to talk to me.”

“We’re talking to you,” Bucky said.

Sitwell’s laugh was ironic, and it was lost on Steve, whose face became even more somber. At the look on Steve’s face, Sitwell’s mood dropped, his hand going across his mouth as if nauseated.

“Is there anything you can tell us?” Steve said. “Anything that wasn’t in your article.”

“I can tell you _War and Peace_ with the information that wasn’t in the article. Problem is, I can’t sort out the real from the planted.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Bucky said.

“And I was inside,” Steve said. “If I can corroborate something, I’ll do it.”

Bucky and Steve went completely still, knowing the moment hung on what the ex-journalist would do next. Bucky wouldn’t interfere with that thought process even by breathing.

Sitwell lifted his index finger and tapped it in the air.

“I may have something,” Sitwell said.

He went into the dining room, which was crammed with more document boxes and began to sift through them.

Steve locked eyes with Bucky. He wasn’t smiling, but there was hope in his eyes.

Sitwell came back with a file box and an old laptop with its charger. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. He slammed the box down on the table and it was simply labeled “Triskelion.”

#

_Human connection is our business. Biotechnology. Advanced Robotics. Intelligent Crops. Safe, clean energy. None of it possible without the human touch. Every one of our employees are creating a world that is sustainable for us and for our children. An investment in humanity is an investment in the future. There is no future without the most important ingredient of all—you._

_Triskelion: To Build A Better Future._

The video came to an end and Sitwell sat back, gesturing to the screen.

“What the hell is this?” Bucky asked.

“If I’m right,” Sitwell said. “This is HYDRA rebranding again.”

“I’ve seen these commercials before,” Steve said. “I don’t watch a lot of TV, but this kind of stuff is always on.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “It’s just shots of factories and animals and children and stuff. I never could figure out what commercials like this were selling.”

“They’re a manufacturing conglomerate,” Sitwell said. “They’re basically selling themselves. They have to put on a friendly face so you don’t think it’s creepy that they’ve got their hands in just about everything. They’ve only been making their mark for the last few years.”

“At about the time they shut down Tesseract,” Steve said.

“You catch on quick, kid.”

Sitwell closed the laptop and set it aside. He opened the file box and out came some documents. He handed them to Bucky. Bucky flipped through and skimmed the contents. He recognized articles, advertisements, and press releases along with financial spreadsheets and tax records.

“How much of this is on the up-and-up?” Bucky said.

“Most of it,” Sitwell said. “The rest of it? I have to protect my sources.”

Bucky nodded, not one to press the issue. Anonymous hackers and spies were hard to get in touch with after they whisteblew anyway.

“Can you connect this to HYDRA?” Steve asked. “Or even Red Room, or Tesseract?”

“I could. But I don’t have the missing links. I would need an _exact_ connection, not just hearsay. This usually means money and high-ranking employees. All that stuff is behind a brick wall. I can’t exactly get private tax records or walk into an HR department and grab a roster. There’s a good reason that stuff is protected.”

Bucky picked through the rest of the box. More of the same, Sitwell’s notes mixed in among the rest.

“How long will you give me to photocopy as much of this as I can?” Bucky asked.

“Take the damn thing,” Sitwell said. “It’s not doing me any good. I have backups on my hard drive.”

“You trust us with this?” Steve asked.

Bucky wanted to shove him with his elbow. By his reckoning, they were practically getting away with murder. Much of it was even annotated and connected for them.

“What the hell else is it good for?” Sitwell asked.

Steve nodded, his smile warm. There was a mote of hope in Steve’s eyes again. Bucky took it in, cherishing it after the way Steve had been shrinking and looking down.

Bucky stood, grabbing the box by the handles. “We gotta put this somewhere safe,” Bucky said. “So, we’d better move.”

“Thank you,” Steve said. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

“I’m the one with the debt,” Sitwell said. “I couldn’t make it stick.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“When you’re a journalist and you jump the gun without being a hundred percent certain, you deserve what comes your way.”

“All the same—thank you.”

They both went to leave when Sitwell stood up from his couch.

“You know ‘Leo,’ don’t you,” Sitwell said. It wasn’t a question.

Steve went still. Bucky recalled the Leo of the article, the victim who had come forward and talked to Sitwell. Steve nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“He hasn’t gone anywhere,” Sitwell said. “Not as far as I know.”

Steve locked eyes with Sitwell. Bucky felt the air hum.

“Thank you,” Steve said.

They left Sitwell in his musty, crowded house and went to the car. The document box sat in the back seat like a third, silent passenger. Bucky turned the ignition but waited to pull out until he knew why Steve was staring into space looking hollow.

“We have to go to New Jersey,” Steve said.

“New Jersey?” Bucky echoed. “Why?”

“I know him. ‘Leo.’ From the article. We have to talk to him. Buck, I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”

“No, it’s a good idea.”

“Really?”

“Really. The more people we can talk to, the better. All we’ll have to deal with is interstate traffic. Which is pretty bad, but not the worst thing we can come up against. We’ll head out tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I could use a burger.”

“I don’t know if I could eat a whole burger right now,” Steve said.

“It’s just nerves. We’ll go to Sonic, get you a hot dog or something.”

“I could do a hot dog.”

“Cool. I’m buyin’.”

“I can pay my own way.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t, I just said I’m buyin’.”

Bucky pulled out of the parking spot and went into the back streets. They sat in silence as the sleepier neighborhoods passed by. Steve’s hands were between his thighs and he played with his fingers. Bucky pretended not to notice the nervous energy in the air.


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky’s neighbor was always overjoyed when she got to feed Gunpowder. He gave her the key, told her as usual not to worry about him, and piled into the Golf. He and Steve had day bags with them, and Bucky had thrown his laptop into a satchel. The hotel room was already booked, a Sheraton in Salem. It would be between two and three hours to get there and Bucky considered their options. Music, podcasts, the radio, or conversation.

Bucky didn’t decide on anything on purpose. He wanted to wait for Steve.

Nothing came from Steve for a long while. He watched Brooklyn go by as they merged onto the I-278. Construction and traffic made it slow-going, and Bucky knew they wouldn’t open up for a while. He could sneak glances now and again. He thought Steve looked like a soft thing, grazed by sunlight, smooth hair golden and eyelashes dusting the air. For the guy who had, as a kid, seemed to have permanently bruised knuckles, covered in cuts and welts, this way of seeing Steve felt new. It was all the more fascinating in the morning light.

His reverie was interrupted when he looked back to the road and his mind began to wander. Traffic started to open up and the sensation of going forward made his mind work. It was still quiet. He tested the possibility of conversation.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “How many more of you are out there?”

“More of me?” Steve asked, his mouth in a wry tilt. “What, you don’t have your hands full with just one?”

Bucky’s laugh caught in his throat as he tried to suppress it.

“You know what I mean,” Bucky said, sobering. “I know there can’t be a lot of you who got away, but—”

“We don’t exactly have a way to keep track of each other. We’re scattered.”

“Ah. Yeah, I figured that much.”

Steve shrugged. He was still looking out the window, the slight breeze from the cracked window buffeting at his hair.

Bucky supposed he should have let it alone. But he couldn’t help but ask.

“Have you lost any of them?” Bucky asked.

The distance of Steve’s stare shortened. He was no longer far afield in his own thoughts. He was solidly in the car with Bucky and the question.

“A few,” Steve confirmed.

“I hate to ask, but,” Bucky continued. “Can you tell me why?”

“Bucky—”

“Okay. Sorry. I’m just—it’s in my nature, you know? Gotta ask questions. I just thought, maybe it might help us—”

“I can’t be sure,” Steve said. “People disappear, and sometimes they’re pretty sick when they drop off the grid. I only know one person has died for sure. She, um—it was quick, I think. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time and… well, they took her out.”

“Jesus. Man, I’m sorry. Who was it? Can I ask?”

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat, head bobbing low. “Natasha,” he said. “Her name was Natasha.”

“Natasha,” Bucky echoed, trying out the taste of the name on his tongue.

It was the way Steve said her name in an almost-whisper. Bucky felt her ghost in the car with them, a specter without a face that he could see.

“Was she like this ‘Leo’ person?” Bucky asked. “One of the kids you escaped with?”

 “We wouldn’t have got out if she hadn’t been with us that night,” Steve said. “I don’t know how she managed it. She was as screwed up as the rest of us—shot up with god-knows-what and still limping from surgery. But she was the strongest of all of us.”

Another heavy coin dropped into the well of debt that Bucky carried in the center of himself. He wished he had some better way to repay the dead than justice after the fact.

“And I couldn’t even—,” Steve began.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “No. Don’t do that to yourself, Steve. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. The only people who oughtta take the blame pulled the trigger.”

Steve stared out the window, somber and distant. If anything were to get Steve to believe what he was saying, Bucky didn’t know what it was. Bucky sighed, staring out at the road ahead as it opened up even more.

“Do you mind if I listen to some podcasts?” Steve said.

He was pulling some earbuds out of his pocket and fiddling with his crummy mp3 player.

“Tell you what,” Bucky said. “Let’s listen together. I wanna hear more podcasts. Get some culture, you know?”

Steve’s smile was small and genuine. “Sure,” he said.

Steve was the last person on earth he thought would listen to true crime podcasts. But there was a sort of fascinating pull to them that Bucky couldn’t deny. It was as if, the closer they were to real danger, the more they could feel how it reflected themselves.

#

This couldn’t be the place.

The building was condemned, a sign posted on the door that marked it as unfit for human occupation. But it was the address that Steve had given him and the one that Bucky had put into his GPS.

Steve got out of the Golf and slammed the door behind him. He stared at the white, run-down house across the street as if he were staring down a cavalry. Bucky came around the car and stood beside him, putting his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t look like anybody lives here anymore.”

“He’s here,” Steve said.

“What? Are you sure? Steve, that house is about to collapse in on itself.”

“Let’s go.”

Steve walked forward and Bucky followed, scanning the street behind him for nosey neighbors. They went past the fence and into the yard, moving through the knee-high grass and going around the side of the house. There was a small step-ladder under a tall window. Steve tested the plywood and found that it pushed aside on a hinge. Steve threw his leg over the windowsill.

Bucky followed him, looking over his shoulder before dodging inside.

He’d had the foresight to attach a flashlight to his keychain. He scanned the darkened house. It was littered with detritus. Whoever had fled the house had not taken everything with them. The remains of the insides of drawers and the underneath of couches piled together in little mounds of trash. His heart broke a little for the floorboards, which he was sure had been nice once but had rotted and cracked. Bucky stepped carefully, mindful of the sound the floor was making, in case it gave way.

“This way,” Steve said, leading on through a gutted kitchen with no drywall and no appliances.

There was a door. It was in the hallway just past the kitchen. Bucky shone the light to see it better. There were three large deadbolts on it, one of them with a double-key lock. Steve reached out and tugged at the door. It didn’t budge.

“That’s not creepy,” Bucky said.

Something nudged the back of his head. At the knowledge of cold, heavy metal, Bucky froze. The slight rattle could only be from the looser parts of a gun. He put his hands up. Steve turned, but in the dim light, wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

The heavy weight of his gun in his holster frustrated Bucky, because there was no way to reach for it just yet. It would have to be a last resort.

“What are you doing in my house?” came a thickly-accented voice from behind him.

“Let’s be calm,” Bucky said.

“Pietro?” Steve said.

The man behind him was silent. Then there was a click and a light. The other man had a flashlight. He shone it on Steve, who held his hand up against the bright LEDs.

“Steven?” asked Pietro.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

The light turned on Bucky and he turned his face away.

“Who is this?” Pietro asked.

“He’s a friend,” Steve assured him. “He can be trusted.”

“Can you?”

Steve huffed and stared at where Pietro would be standing. Bucky still couldn’t see him for the haze of bright blue-white light.

“Into the basement,” Pietro said.

The man moved past them and they heard the jangle of metal keys, then the tumble of deadbolts. The door opened and a light flicked on. The light from underneath cast onto Pietro and he spied a long cane made of a light wood, which he leaned on heavily. They followed the man into the basement. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Bucky’s jaw dropped.

The basement was completely finished. The walls were painted and the ceiling was solid, showing no sign that the floor above could be sagging into the basement. There was a subtle glow from the lamps, and he saw that there was a wall of plants under supportive lights. There was a mattress on the floor and a desk. Everything in shelves and there was a neat and tidy desk.

Bucky got a good look at Pietro. He was just a kid, like Steve, but he clocked him a little younger. His hair was silver-white, but darker at the roots. He didn’t think it was dyed. He wore a windbreaker on top of track pants and new sneakers. His blue eyes darted between the two of them and he leaned heavily against his cane.

“Where the hell have you been?” Pietro asked Steve, and again, Bucky noted an accent.

“I’ve been around,” Steve said.

“And who is this?”

“This is my friend. His name is Bucky. He’s a private investigator.”

Pietro narrowed his eyes and then limped over to Bucky. He put his hand over Bucky’s chest and began patting him down. Bucky backed away, pushing Pietro’s hand away. He knew he couldn’t let the man see that he had a gun tucked under his jacket.

“What the hell?” Bucky asked.

“Are you wearing a wire?” Pietro said.

“No!”

“What about those little cameras? Maybe one of your buttons.”

Pietro moved forward again, but Steve came up and put his hand around his forearm. The man seemed to come back to himself entirely, shrinking a little, his hand wobbling his cane purposefully.

“I would offer you somewhere to sit, but—,” Pietro said.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “We won’t be in your hair long.”

“No, please. Be in my hair. As you can probably guess, I don’t have many guests.”

Pietro went over to a desk and pulled out his chair. He fell into it and gripped the edge of the desk, breathing deep, as if he had run there.

“I looked for you,” Steve said.

“I know,” Pietro said. “I thought hiding in the same place would keep you off my trail.”

“Me?”

“I don’t know if you know this, but you’re quite the pain in the ass, Rogers.”

This made Steve laugh, but Bucky could only raise his brow and look between them. Pietro turned his chair until he was staring straight at Steve. Steve stared back, unblinking.

“I have a little hope,” Pietro said. “That you have news. But it’s a little hope. It won’t kill me if you say you have no news.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I still don’t know where she is.”

Despite what Pietro had said, Bucky still saw how it crushed him. He didn’t know who ‘she’ was, but her absence hung in the air like an ache.

“So, that’s not why you have come,” Pietro said.

“I haven’t stopped looking,” Steve promised.

“Why have you come?”

“We’re going after HYDRA. For real this time.”

“Oh, this time. Yes, of course.”

“Pietro—“

“What’s changed all of a sudden that you can just decide to kill an empire?”

“They got Erskine.”

That made Pietro’s eyes widen and tremble, the darkness under his brows deepening. He looked to Bucky for confirmation. Bucky’s nod was slight, and it seemed enough to convince Pietro.

“They found him out,” Pietro said. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “All I know is that they paid someone to murder him, and made a statement about it.”

“When did this happen?”

“Just this week.”

Whatever Pietro spit out it wasn’t English, and it wasn’t a polite word. He hit the ground with the rubber nub of his cane. It looked like the energy expenditure hurt.

“He was one of the good ones,” Pietro said. “There’s no justice in this.”

“No,” Steve said. “There isn’t. But there can be.”

“No. Not again. I already bared my soul and what did it get me? I live underground, I dream nightly of what they did to us—of what they’re still doing to us—and I get weaker all the time. I’ve learned. There is no fixing this. There’s no justice for what was done. They’ll become something else, and then something else, just like Sitwell said. That is, until they achieve whatever goal they had, with what they did to us.”

“We just have to do better this time. That’s why I need you. They’ll listen to you when—”

“Who will listen to me? No one cares about Sokovian refugees. They look and they just see some gypsy here to dirty the streets. _That’s_ why Sitwell’s article failed. No one will believe that the government could give children away to be experimented on, just because they have so few papers that they can stop existing with the right clerical error.”

Bucky could see Steve getting ready to rail against that sentiment. It would be quite a Steve thing to do, to insist that people _would_ care, if they just put a human face on things. Bucky stepped forward, interrupting the flow of the conversation.

“You’re from Sokovia?” Bucky asked.

“Me, and my sister,” Pietro said. “We came after the last war. We had nothing left, so we finally got approved to travel here. And then HYDRA was waiting to snatch us up. Told us, it was for our health. All that stuff we breathed in, they said, it was killing us. But look at me now, why don’t you? The picture of perfect health.”

“Did your sister survive the tests?”

“We escaped together. But we were separated. I have not seen my sister in three years. And she was not well when last I saw her.”

“I have a sister. Older? Younger?”

“Younger. By twelve minutes.”

That stung Bucky in a way he didn’t expect. It seemed unimaginable, to have gone through that with a sister, only to not know if she was even alive. But a twin—someone strung together so closely to another, like a soulmate. That sounded like hell.

“I suppose you weren’t always like this,” Bucky said.

Pietro moved his cane in small circles, just to play with it. “This is what happens when they put quicksilver in your veins. I only found out later, how much mercury was in the serum they tried on me. You should look at my file. I’m sure Steven still has it. I’m poison, from head to toe.”

“You don’t have a doctor? Anything?”

“As you can imagine, I’m not that interested in a long hospital stay where there will be needles in my arms and fluid going into my veins.”

Bucky and Steve locked eyes. There was sympathy in Steve’s expression for that sentiment.

“Look,” Bucky said. “We’re not telling anybody where you are. If you really want it, we’ll leave you alone. But we have a real chance at this. Steve’s research, Sitwell’s research, a murder, and now if we can get you and a few more people to come forward, we can really kill this thing dead.”

“Oh yes? Then tell me, when Tesseract disappeared, can you say for sure what it turned into?”

“We might.”

“ _Might_.” Pietro said the word like biting into a sour apple. “If you want me to be by your side in the case of a ‘might’ you are dreaming. Leave me be, Rogers. It was nice to meet your friend. I remember you speaking well of him. But I am done.”

Steve sighed and stared at the concrete floor, his eyes dark under fallen lashes. His shoulders slumped, he put his hands into his pockets.

“We’ll go,” Steve said. “But I just want you to know, the last time there was a clue about Wanda, it was in Connecticut. Newhaven. It could have been someone else. The CCTV footage wasn’t very good.”

“How did you find out about it?” Pietro asked.

“By following a HYDRA employee. Don’t worry. I erased it before he could find it.”

“Thank you.”

Steve nodded. He turned to Bucky and jerked his head towards the stairs.

“There’s one favor I gotta ask before we go,” Steve said.

“And what is that?” Pietro said, turning his head in sarcastic humor.

“Just don’t go anywhere. You know I won’t tell anybody where you are. I am still looking for Wanda. If I find her, I want to be able to say where you are, too.”

Pietro’s sarcastic smirk fell and he nodded. “I’m very comfortable where I am.”

They both nodded to Pietro and turned to go, but when Steve’s foot fell on the first step—

“Wait,” Pietro said.

They froze as Pietro went to his desk and found a notepad. He scribbled something down on it and tore it off the pad. He pushed himself up with his cane and came over to Steve, handing it to him.

“I don’t think either of us knew about this facility,” Pietro said. “It came up when I was searching for my sister. I was going to check it out myself, but—”

Pietro gestured entirely to himself.

“Thank you,” Steve said in a breath. “This could really be something.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know what you’re going to find in there. It could be danger, but probably it is nothing.”

“This is not nothing,” Bucky said. “Even a building’s holdings might have something to speak to.”

“Well,” Pietro said. “Whatever the case, just keep me out of it. I’m more than happy to keep my nose clean.”

#

Lehigh, New Jersey, was another hour and a half drive, but Bucky figured they might as well take it. Steve was his trusty navigator, looking up and down from the phone to the different exits. The roads became less populated, and then the gas stations were spread further apart, and the lights were reduced to the highway lamps.

“I think it’s this one,” Steve said, pointing to an exit the second before the GPS announced it.

Bucky would have missed it. The sign was barely before the exit and nearly covered by foilage. They rolled into the town.

It was a run-down place, almost a ghost town, but there were still lights on the road, lit up windows in the houses, a gas station, and a grocery store. Steve leaned forward, glancing between the phone and what was in front of the car.

By the time they found the flat, squat building, night had fallen in earnest. The complex was blocked off by chains connected to great concrete cinder blocks. Bucky parked on the street and scanned the complex.

“I wonder how long it’s been abandoned,” Bucky said.

“I’m gonna guess three years,” Steve said.

“This isn’t where—”

“No. I was somewhere else. There’s an office supply logistics company there now. I’ve already checked it out. No sign of HYDRA.”

Bucky clapped Steve really quick on the chest. “Let’s go, before security spots us.”

They got out of the car and Bucky got flashlights and a camera out of the back. He threaded the camera over his head so it hung off his neck. They made their way across the empty parking lot to the fore building. There was a posting outside the door for trespassers and they walked right by it. The front door was chained, and a padlock with a keypad hung from the base of the door handle.

He fished out two pairs of latex gloves and handed one to Steve.

“Try not to touch anything,” he said, slipping his on.

Bucky kneeled and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Shine that light,” Bucky asked.

Steve pointed his flashlight and the phone scanned the lock. Fingerprints appeared and the phone read it on its screen.

“What is that?” Steve asked.

“Tools of the trade,” Bucky said with a grin.

He keyed in a number and the key locker opened. Several keys fell out and Bucky compared them to the padlock on the chain. He unlocked the pad, took the chain off the lock and found the key to the lock of the door underneath.

Corners and long hallways conspired to confuse and befuddle them, but Bucky had a good memory for spaces, leaving mental breadcrumbs with every step he took. Steve stayed close behind, checking behind them every once in a while, when their steps echoed and an imaginary third presence threatened to show.

“They all look the same,” Steve said.

“What do you mean?” Bucky asked.

“The facilities. Just hallways and small rooms. That smell. The disinfectant and plastic.”

It was true—the facility still smelled medical. Despite being abandoned, it was stringently clean, but for layers of dust on counters, around lintels, and coating the floor. The paint was still fairly fresh, there not being activity to stain it.

It was only creepy because it was abandoned. He shone his light into rooms and their emptiness invited shadows. His mind wanted to fill the long stretches of dark with phantasms, so he swallowed his fear. He had the pressure of a gun by his side, and Steve at his back. Anything creeping in the shadows would have them to contend with.

They found the stairway to the basement. “Going down?” Bucky guessed.

They made their way down the winding stair and found a door at the bottom with a serious lock on it, controlled by a keypad. Bucky tried every key from the box and none of them fit. He scanned the room for another locker but came up short.

“Now what?” Steve asked.

“If we had power in the building, I could get the key code,” Bucky said, gesturing with his phone.

“Well, how much power do we need?”

“What do you mean?”

“Those things can’t run on that much electricity, right?”

“No. Why?”

Steve unscrewed the end of his flashlight and pulled out a large DD battery. Bucky’s eyes went from the battery to Steve. He plucked the battery out of Steve’s hands.

“I could kiss you, you know that?” Bucky said.

“Buy me dinner first,” Steve said in a laugh.

Bucky broke the casing on the keypad, exposing wires underneath. Bucky traced them, figured out their functions, and teased out a green wire. He pulled a pocket knife out of his jeans and gently stripped the wire. He put his knife away and then guided Steve’s hands to hold the battery’s positive charge to the wire.

A tiny red light slowly brightened until it made a small electronic chirp.

Bucky scanned the keypad with his phone, and entered a number.

There was a click and Bucky pulled the door open before the battery could disconnect or drain and put the deadbolt back.

“How’d you know to do that?” Steve asked.

“Took a few bombs apart in Iraq,” Bucky said. “I know how to find a power cord. You ready?”

Steve nodded and put the battery back into his flashlight.

The basement was more in the spirit of creepy abandoned buildings than the rest of it. The walls and floors were concrete, unpainted, and impersonal. Everything was unfinished, devoid of care or a sense of singular purpose.

Several rooms were filled with nothing but hospital beds. They were haphazardly stored, some knocked over, some piled on top of one another. There were folded wheelchairs, examination tables, toxic waste bins without any contents.

Bucky began to take pictures, the flash illuminating spots of dust hanging in the air. The medical equipment rose in piles like metal mountains, but Bucky wasn’t sure yet what it all meant.

“How many people do you think they had here?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “My facility was in a way different kind of building. It wasn’t a complex.”

Bucky continued down the hall, taking a picture of the long, stretching hallways. Soon the rooms began to be emptier, fewer discarded medical equipment.

“Why did they just leave all this stuff behind?” Steve asked.

“My guess?” Bucky said. “Probably one less way to trace HYDRA to its other holdings. A large shipment of equipment from one facility to another, some of it with registration numbers on ‘em, that would leave a trail. I would bet they had the money to just buy a new batch.”

“They really thought of everything, didn’t they?”

The low rumble in Steve’s voice spoke to an anger that had been festering for a while.

Bucky’s flashlight scanned the room. He started and stopped when he saw the black shape. It was a halo around the door and crept onto the ceiling. It couldn’t be anything other than smoke residue. Bucky snapped a picture and then beckoned Steve to follow him into the room.

The concrete ceiling and walls had kept the entire building from going up. Whatever kind of fire it was, it burned hot. He could still smell the charcoal.

In the center of the room was a large ash pile. Whoever had set the fire had stirred it, likely to be careful not to lose the building. Bucky crouched down next to the ash pile and took out his knife again, digging into the heap.

“What do you think they burned?” Steve asked.

“Anything too important to leave to the shredders,” Bucky said. “Something that couldn’t even leave this basement.”

What was left after the fire was infuriatingly small and useless. Little circles of white that used to be paper, shards of glass, and indistinguishable metal things that would not melt. He wanted to dig his hands into the ash and search more thoroughly, but there was no telling what was underneath—the glass, needles, and god knows what else.

His knife hit something. He tested its parameters and found that it was rectangular. He plied it up, carefully took it by the corner and lifted it out of the pile.

The clipboard was still stubbornly holding on to blackened slivers of paper and had been eaten by flames, except in the area around the metal clip. There were only two inches of paper, wood, and metal left.

Steve shone his light onto it as Bucky laid it on the floor. Gently, he lifted the metal and pulled the layers of blackened paper away.

There was white underneath.

As delicate as he could, he separated the blackened sheets from the fragile, light paper. He pulled in a breath he was too scared to inhale. There was text on it.

“What does that say?” Steve asked.

The first thing he did was snap a picture. Then, Bucky reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and found an evidence bag. He still carried them around with him, a habit from when he was a cop. He slid it inside, delicate with the fragile paper. He shone his light on it, through the plastic.

_—ation to activate the compound. Adverse effects can be attributed to mercury compound—testing inconclusive with—cellular regrowth hindered by immunity inhibitors despite new serum ingred—functioning impaired. Subject 21 appears exhausted and exhibits symptoms of radia—_

It went on like that in blotches, none of it making much sense to him. From the look on Steve’s face, it was lost on him, too.

“It looks like a report,” Bucky said.

“Who’s subject 21?” Steve asked, pointing to the name in the middle of the text.

“I’m betting we’re not supposed to find out.”

Bucky dug around in the ash pile some more, but didn’t find anything quite as miraculous. He scanned the blackened room with his flashlight one last time and then turned to Steve.

“Let’s check the other two—,” Bucky began.

He heard the crack of something and turned his head down. His light shone on something white and sharp, which had cracked under his feet.

A sick, bitter taste crawled up his throat. Bucky went down on one knee and, as fast as he could, took a picture.

“What is that?” Steve asked, shining his light on it.

“ _Shit_ ,” Bucky swore. “Shit, shit, shit. We have to get out of here.”

“Why? What is that?”

Bucky backed out of the room, wiping the ash behind him until their footprints disappeared. Bucky steered Steve out of the room and led him down the hallway.

“If I were to guess?” Bucky said. “The last of Subject 21.”

#

Bucky had a large bag with him after coming out of the Target, the building getting locked behind him. They’d made it just in time, and Bucky got back in his car, handing the bag to Steve, who was waiting in the passenger seat.

“I hope you like Converse,” Bucky said. “If they don’t fit, I’ll buy you new ones.”

Steve took off his shoes and traded them for the Converse, which were new and stiff.

“Why are we doing this?” Steve asked.

“Because we were never there,” Bucky said. “I’m not having someone match my shoes to the prints at a murder scene. Especially not when I don’t know how we’re going to convince the police to go into that basement.”

Steve’s brows went up and he put the other shoe on. Bucky gestured for Steve to give him the old ones. Bucky laid them out on the shrub dirt at the end of the row along with his own, slipping on a new pair of boots afterwards.

“What about the old shoes?” Steve said.

“Someone will take them before daybreak,” Bucky said. “Trust me.”

They drove to their hotel, a Ramada near Jersey City, far enough away from anything to avoid suspicion if the facility became a problem. They checked in and brought their day bags up. It was a simple room, cramped, with a desk, a dresser with a TV on it, and two double beds.

“We should do our laundry while we’re here,” Bucky said. “We might have all kinds of evidence on us.”

Steve nodded and they both got out of their clothes, changing and gathering their things in a linen bag. They went down into the hotel basement and threw everything in the washing machine with the quarters they had gotten from the Target.

They sat on the floor in the clothes they planned to sleep in, Steve’s legs pulled in, while Bucky’s legs sprawled out in front of him. They were too tired to speak, the events of the day pounding in the air like a bad headache.

“You know,” Bucky said. “I thought there would be less bodies as a PI.”

“My bad,” Steve said through a sad laugh.

“Don’t say that. It’s not like it’s your fault.”

“It is, a little. I’ve got you into this and I’m sorry.”

“Come on, Steve. You got nothin’ to do with the bodies that are dropping.”

“Then why do they keep dropping around _me_?”

“The sun doesn’t rise because the rooster crows.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not the one killing them.”

Steve nodded, but by the way he was looking into middle-distance, he wasn’t sure the message got in.

“Do you ever wish you were still a cop?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “I busted my ass, trying to get to detective. My first few years as a cop, I was taking night classes. I’d show up to psych even when I was running on two hours of sleep. Got my degree by eating textbooks like it was part of my daily recommended fiber. Got the education, got the degree. Then a few years in I just— “

“Bucky… what?”

“It just wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. But I’ve still got all that up here.”

Bucky tapped his forehead. Steve smiled.

“What are you going to do with all that stuff up there?” Steve asked.

“Figure this out,” Bucky said. “You gotta pull it apart until you get to the core. Like, why burn Subject 21? _If_ that’s who that was. Why burn and not dispose of them in a river, or put them in a morgue? Why burn? That’s not something an organization does. That’s something a person does. Like they were trying to put something to rest. Maybe it was as much a cremation as a cover-up.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“That big brain I could never convince you that you had.”

Bucky couldn’t help his own grin. “I’ve gotten better at not doubting myself. You should give it a try.”

Steve was, of all things, bashful in the face of that, his shoulders coming up like they could shield him. But there was the ghost of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Bucky found he wanted to cross the space between them, press in next to him and throw an arm over his shoulder, like when they were kids and Steve was feeling small, something he only allowed Bucky to see.

He stayed where he was.

They talked and talked about inconsequential things and then the laundry was done. They brought it upstairs and folded it, Steve turning on the eleven o’clock news, paying attention as if he were waiting for something. He turned it off once they got to sports.

Steve yawned and so Bucky yawned and realized they must both be exhausted. He turned off the main lights and the glow of the bedside lamps was low and gentle. Steve looked at him, pensive, a deep breath making his chest rise and fall. He didn’t understand why Steve was looking at him from under heavy brows, his mouth tight.

“Let’s get a good eight hours,” Bucky said, plugging in his phone and setting the alarm.

“So, uh,” Steve said. “There’s something I should have told you. I should have mentioned it the first night I stayed with you.”

Bucky sat on the edge of his bed, his hands clasped. “What is it, buddy?”

Bucky felt the air get softer, quieter, as if in respect. He looked Steve up and down and noticed Steve’s pajamas were just like his other clothes. The pajama pants frayed at the hem, and his t-shirt was loose and thin with too many washes. A pang hit him and he wondered how one goes about casually buying a friend a decent shirt.

Steve relaxed and looked up at him, his eyes dark in the low light.

“I have nightmares,” Steve confessed.

“Nightmares?” Bucky asked. “How bad?”

“Depends on the night, I guess. I just—I feel one coming on. It builds up and I just know. It might be tonight. I figured I’d warn you. If you hear me, you don’t have to check on me. It’s not smart to wake someone like that. Just let me ride it out. I’ll wake up on my own.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Listen, I’m real sorry about not telling you. I just got tired, it slipped my mind, and I almost forgot that I have them for a little while.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I get them, too.”

Surprise flashed in Steve’s eyes. His mouth parted and he took in a sharp intake of breath.

“I’m a vet,” Bucky said, by way of explanation. “And I’ve seen some heavy shit, as a cop. I get into bad spots, too. I have my tricks, though. And it’s half the reason I have a cat.”

“PTSD?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. But I have my help. I go to groups, take some cognitive therapy classes. Steve, you’re not going to bother me if you have a nightmare. Thanks for telling me though. I’ll look out for you.”

“I don’t need looking out for.”

“’Course not. But if you did, I’d know what you were going through. Are we okay?”

Steve nodded. Bucky could practically hear gears moving in his head, eyes down, scanning the ugly maroon carpet. Bucky began shifting to get into bed.

“But you’re alright now,” Steve said.

Bucky shrugged. “I’m doing alright.”

Steve smirked and sort of tilted his head to the side. He rubbed his arms and Bucky’s attention was brought again to how skinny he’d become. He thought of everything he had seen so far—the serums, the way Pietro had talked about quicksilver in the blood, the incomprehensible list of side effects in the scrap of paper they had found. That sick feeling cropped up again, the acidic somersault in his belly that told him _something is very wrong_. He’d had that feeling since he was seventeen, since that last phone call with Steve’s foster parents, who told him not to bother them anymore. When he knew the trail was cold.

And now there were nightmares.

“Come on, get some sleep,” Bucky said. “I promise that if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can crawl into bed with me.”

Bucky playfully patted the mattress beside him.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Goodnight, Buck.”

“I like that you call me ‘Buck.’”

“Really?”

“Nobody calls me ‘Buck’ anymore.”

Steve’s smile softened, and Bucky noted his long lashes as he blinked slowly. Bucky always thought they were nice, something he didn’t have the guts to tell him.

“See ya in the morning,” Bucky said and turned out the lights.

#

Bucky’s alarm didn’t wake Steve. He was still conked out, holding his pillow, curled up in a loose ‘c.’ He smiled down at the sleeping figure, and figured he’d let Steve rest. Partially so they didn’t have to fight for the bathroom. Bucky went through his morning routine, brushing his teeth, showering, drying his hair, combing it back and washing his face. He came out of the bathroom and Steve was still asleep. He dressed in the middle of the room without shame, because there was no way Steve would be waking up. Finally, he went over and shook Steve’s shoulder.

Steve’s eyes flittered open for a moment before he fell back asleep, seeming to get heavier as he collapsed back into the mattress.

“Come on, man, let’s get out of here by nine. Traffic’s gonna suck.”

He shook Steve harder and Steve gasped awake, letting go of his pillow. He began to push himself up, but Bucky saw his arm tremble and he fell back down like a baby lamb.

“Steve?” Bucky asked.

“I can get up,” Steve said.

Except it didn’t look like that. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open and attempts to roll over were futile. By the time Steve got himself to sit on the edge of the bed he was wavering, his toes not quite finding the ground.

“Steve?” Bucky asked again.

No sooner was Steve on his feet that he fell. Bucky caught him, grabbing his head out of an instinct to protect it, before helping him to lie gently on the ground.

“I’m fine,” Steve said through a heavy voice. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Jesus,” Bucky swore. “Oh god, Steve.”

He rushed to grab his phone and looked up the nearest hospital.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky had a _New Yorker_ magazine in his hands, but the paragraphs in front of him blurred together into nothingness. All he could think about was Steve, unconscious, in one of the rooms. It had taken them long enough to get to him and treat him—hassles with Steve not having insurance or ID a special headache—that by the time the doctor came out to get Bucky it was into the afternoon.

“How is he?” Bucky asked.

“He’s ready to receive visitors,” Doctor Allen said. “But you know I can’t tell you anything about his condition. He’s allowed you to come see him. He’s down in room 302.”

When Bucky rounded the corner into room 302, a nurse was pressing him down, not a difficult task as Steve seemed about as strong as a wet noodle. Bucky stepped further into the room and they locked eyes. Steve calmed, as if coming back to himself, slightly embarrassed.

“Sir, you might want to come back until after he’s calm,” said the nurse.

“I’m calm,” Steve insisted. “I’m alright now, I’m calm.”

Steve settled back into the bed, eyelids heavy, breathing in large, heaving breaths. The nurse backed away slightly. The nurse helped him out by raising the bed until it was reclining. Steve turned to the nurse, who considered him with a wary eye.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I don’t mean to misbehave. My mom was a nurse.”

“Well, then,” the nurse said. “You should know better than to wiggle around too much with an IV in your arm.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Steve’s little smile might have been genuine in spirit, but it also wasn’t reaching all the way to his eyes.

“Can you two behave while I give you some privacy?” the nurse asked.

“I’ll keep him in check,” Bucky promised.

“I know it’s tempting, but no fooling around.”

“Um... what?” Bucky said.

“We won’t,” Steve said.

They stood in silence as the nurse left. Bucky rounded on Steve.

“No fooling around?” he asked.

“I thought they’d let you in sooner if they thought you were my boyfriend,” Steve said.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot. In more ways than one. How sick are you?”

“You know I’ve always had problems,” Steve said.

“I remember. I saw you in the hospital then, too. I brought you your homework and we played card games. But this is different, isn’t it? It feels different from what I remember. It was HYDRA, wasn’t it? They made it worse. Am I right?”

Steve inhaled, and his face was screwed up in anger. He was also picking at his fingernails.

“They pumped me full of garbage and irradiated me,” Steve said. “How do you think it went?”

“I’m not mad, Steve. This was just important to know. If I’d’ve known—“

“If you’d have known, what? You’d hover over me like everybody else. I couldn’t stand it if you looked at me different, Buck. I don’t want your pity.”

“Pity _nothing_. Try making me feel sorry for you, it won’t work. I just wanna make sure you don’t _faint in the middle of the street_.”

Some of Steve’s defensiveness deflated. “That’s on me.”

“Damn right, it is.”

Steve stiffened, and his spine seemed to turn into a straight line. He stared at Bucky, as if he was seeing the specter of a different person all of a sudden. He lowered his head, bangs falling in front of his eyes. He shut them up tight and shook his head slow, as if getting out an ache.

“I passed out because of the pernicious anemia. It’s one of the side-effects of my tests. It’s not a big deal, honest. Erskine would give me B12 shots for it. I’m supposed to take them monthly, but it’s been two months.”

“Why don’t you take care of yourself, you moron? It’s just a shot.”

“I was supposed to get one from Erskine before—”

Bucky sighed, his hands on his hips. “Well, they’ll stick you and then we can get out of here.”

“We have to get out of here _now_.”

“Not until you get your shot.”

“No, Buck. I’ve already been here too long.”

“Why do you wanna get out of here so bad?”

“I’m in the system. Why do you think you could never find records on me? Erskine was my friend, but he was also my doctor. This is the first time I’ve been in a hospital since I was seventeen. They can find me this way. They definitely know I’m here. They’ll find me and they’ll put me back in a lab. I’m still useful to them. I’m still an asset.”

“Calm down—”

“ _Please_.”

Steve cried it through his teeth. For the first time, Bucky saw naked fear in his eyes. He was scared. Really scared. It wasn’t a fear of HYDRA, not really. Bucky wondered how many times people had walked away from him when he needed them to believe him.

Bucky massaged the bridge of his nose. Frustration built in his body. He tried to resist, but the answer was always simple.

“Whatever’s going to keep you safe,” Bucky said. “That’s all I care about right now.”

There was that look on Steve’s face again, the shell-shocked disbelief that Bucky believed anything he was saying. It twisted something in Bucky’s gut to think of Steve being alone with this. To need medicine and not be able to see a doctor, to be hunted and having to live off the grid, probably with a fake name and an empty, unattached life.

“There’s something we need to do before we go,” Steve said.

#

Bucky stood by the supply closet door and waited. It took him two tries before he memorized the tones for the keypad password. The hall emptied out of people and he put the passcode in as quick as possible, ducking in before anybody else came through the hall.

Steve had described what the B12 shots looked like and where they’d be. He found the refrigerator and skimmed it until he found the bottles, taking two, just in case. There were other things on Steve’s list. He grabbed those, too. There were needles in the cupboard nearby and he grabbed a spare few. It all went into a plastic bag, which he wrapped up and stuffed into the inner pocket of his jacket. When he peeked out the door he didn’t see anyone in the hall. He marched back to Steve’s wing with the practiced air of someone who belonged wherever he was.

The whole heist had been disturbingly easy.

Back in room 302, Steve was already stepping into his overlarge pants, getting ready to go.

“I got it,” Bucky said.

“Give it to me now,” Steve insisted.

Steve was a good teacher, showing him where to put it in the muscle of his outer hip. Steve still winced when Bucky put the plunger in. Bucky threw the needle into the biohazard wastebin.

They didn’t bother checking out.

#

Bucky drove through the Jersey City streets, Steve in the seat beside him, curled up, but looking better.

“Why are you doing this?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s brow came down as he tried to think what Steve could mean. “Doing what?” he asked.

“Helping me. This is nothing but trouble for you. Half the things we’re doing are illegal.”

“I don’t like to think of it as illegal. More like lateral investigating. It’ll be okay. We’re being careful, we won’t get into any trouble.”

“You still didn’t say why you’re helping me.”

“Come on. You know why.”

“I don’t.”

“Because you’re my friend, dumbass. What do you want, a soliloquy? It’s simple like that.”

“It’s been eight years. I don’t know if I’m worth any of this, Buck.”

Something snapped. Bucky hit the brakes, and he saw the car behind him lurch. With a hard jerk, he pulled the car over to the side of the road. The car behind him honked and the driver threw his arm up as he passed. Bucky returned the gesture.

He practically slammed the car in park and rounded on Steve, who was pressed back into his seat, a little scared, a lot surprised. He balked at the stern face that looked at him.

“It’s been eight years of me looking for your sorry ass,” Bucky said.

“What?” Steve asked, voice small.

“You know, I tried starting a campaign. I tried a few times. I wanted people to help me find you, even though it didn’t seem to stick. Because we’re exchanging letters and calling each other, sending emails, and then all of a sudden no one knows where you are. Just like that. You disappeared, Steve. My best friend disappeared and I couldn’t even get the police to look into it. So, _I_ looked into it, because no one else would. I kept looking into it.  And I never gave up. And you’re sitting here telling me you’re not worth it. You gonna look me in the face right now and tell me I’ve wasted my time?”

The silence that followed sat profoundly heavy and seemed to be pinning Steve to the side of his seat. He was pressed up half against the door, as if he wanted to escape. But he stayed still, lips parted and eyes wide in shock.

Bucky turned away, staring out the front window. He glared into the street.

“I never gave up on you,” Bucky said. “Never. I wasn’t gonna. Not until it said ‘deceased’ in your social security record.”

He could hear Steve’s deep breath, but he couldn’t look at him yet. Bucky could feel his legs and elbows start to shake and he didn’t quite know how to get them under control. He grabbed the steering wheel and gripped it tight, as if he was ready to drive again. He wasn’t.

“Buck—,” Steve began, but couldn’t continue.

“I was seventeen,” Bucky said. “No one would listen to me. And no one was going to look into sealed foster records to tell me where you’d gone. Your foster parents refused to talk to me. They called the police on me for harassment. I knew something was wrong then, and I was right. I should’ve done more. I should’ve—”

“There was nothing you could have done. You said it. We were just kids. You didn’t have to take any of this on.”

“You’re my best friend. ‘Course I did.”

It occurred to Bucky that he should have said that in the past tense, but it had felt right. They hadn’t changed that much. It felt the same, the two of them fitting together like they were made from the same stock. He didn’t say any of this.

“You’re my best friend, too,” Steve said. “I thought it would be different, that you’d have changed too much. You’re the same Bucky I used to know. You’re just—there’s more to you.”

“And you’ve always been Steve. You’re like a constant.”

“I should have come to you sooner.”

“Don’t. Don’t beat yourself up on my account.”

“It’s just that after five years in HYDRA, I figured you’d have forgotten about me.”

_Five years_. The weight of that hit him like a sack of bricks. Five years in one of those goddamn facilities, five years of torture, so messed up by it all that by the end he’d found himself unrecognizable, thinking Bucky wouldn’t recognize him, either.

“You’re a hard person to forget,” Bucky said.

Steve’s laugh was self-deprecating, but it was a laugh and that brought Bucky’s shakes down.

“We’re both a little messed up, aren’t we?” Bucky asked.

“Look,” Steve said. “Now we have even more in common.”

This time it was Bucky that laughed, a sharp, curt sound. “I guess so.”

“How do we start again? Because we can’t just pick up where we left off.”

“We start with trust. We start with assuming that I’m going to have your back, whatever you tell me from here on in. Can we do that?”

Steve’s face became pensive again, but he nodded. “We can do that.”

Bucky exhaled and turned the car back on, pulling out of his spot and getting back on the road. Steve was quiet again, turning his head and staring out into the passing city streets. He laid his forehead against the glass and Bucky let him have his silence. He trusted that he needed it in a way that outweighed how much Bucky wanted to hear everything that was going through Steve’s busy, veiled mind.

#

After a couple hours of traffic, Bucky found a parking spot close to his apartment. He stopped the car and looked over to Steve. He looked pale and winded, and all they were doing was driving.

“You okay?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “It’s just the shot. B12 burns like a mother. Don’t worry about it.”

Steve had to lean on Bucky a few times to make it up the stairs, but he was nowhere near as bad as he had been in the morning. Color was coming back to his face, and his breath wasn’t as shallow.

“Caaat!” Bucky quietly yelled into the apartment, out of habit, and Gunpowder trotted up, hopping onto the side table. Steve scratched him behind the ear and went inside. Bucky held out his hand in a fist and the cat bumped it lightly with its paw.

“You’re eating a big dinner tonight,” Bucky said.

“I’m not that hungry,” Steve said.

“Tough shit. We’re having burgers.”

Postmates brought their burgers, fries and drinks from a little drive-in style spot that Bucky liked. They sat at his little linoleum kitchen table and ate, Bucky trying to be slow to keep pace with Steve’s bird-like eating, even though Bucky’s burger was twice the size of Steve’s. Eventually Steve got it all down, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“Feel better?” Bucky asked.

“I do,” Steve said. “Thanks for dinner.”

Bucky leaned back, wiping his hands with a paper napkin. “So, what did it used to be—?”

“What?”

“When you used to go to the hospital. I remember asthma, you had that pretty bad. You always got ear infections. You were anemic, too, but not this pernicious stuff.”

“I was always catching coughs. Remember, I got scarlet fever when I was nine. Like something outta _Little Women_.”

“Stomach ulcers.”

“Those, too.”

“How much of that is still around?”

Steve sighed and sat back, his eyes up to the ceiling as he thought. “What’s funny is, before they pumped me full of all that crap, they cured almost everything.”

“Seriously?” Bucky said, leaning forward.

“Seriously. I guess they needed a clean slate, so they’d know what was me and what was the tests. They patched me up just to screw me up again.”

“So, they really did have the technology to help sick kids, and this is what they did with it.”

Steve just raised a brow and shrugged, like it was something he’d considered a thousand times before in regular conversation.

“None of this is right,” Bucky said.

“They’re going to pay for what they did to us,” Steve assured him. “If I have to burn all the buildings down to do it, then I will. Problem is, I don’t know where the buildings are.”

“Let’s be a little more careful than ‘burn it all down.’ We need evidence, and to bring charges. You can’t do that with a scorched earth policy.”

“Are you sure I can’t just blow something up?”

Steve smiled more from Bucky’s laugh than his own joke. They shared a comfortable silence, both thinking deeply about what had transpired over just 48 hours. There was another victim, a scrap of paper that might be useful, Steve’s new illnesses, and the way that Pietro Maximoff had talked about what had happened to him and others like him. It was dizzying.

“I need to decompress,” Bucky said. “None of this is going to make sense unless I do. Right now, it’s just a jumble of _stuff_. I’m not going to be of any use to anyone unless I get some sleep.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep,” Steve said. “I spent enough time unconscious today.”

“Passed out isn’t the same as sleep. Get sleep.”

“Yes, mom.”

Bucky got up, gathering all the trash from their burgers. “Also make sure to take your Ovaltine and wash behind your ears.”

Steve refused to laugh, but his sideways smile was enough for Bucky.

They went through their nightly routines, even though it was barely nine and the world still felt busy around them. They orbited around each other, quiet and comfortable in their spaces.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, as he began to crawl under his sheets.

“Yeah, buddy?” Bucky asked.

“I haven’t thanked you. You’ve had my back these past few days, and you didn’t have to.”

“Come on, Steve. I’ve always got your back.”

Steve’s smile was coy, his head tilting in a way that made his bangs fall closer to his eyes. “I know.”

“Goodnight, Steve.”

Steve just nodded, and was still sitting up when Bucky closed his door, leaving it open a crack in case the cat wanted out in the middle of the night.

#

Almost asleep, Bucky’s head was heavy on his pillow. He heard the slow, familiar creak of his own door and then craned around, twisting at the middle. Steve was slipping inside, feet silent on the hardwood, dressed only in an undershirt and boxer briefs. Gunpowder jumped off the bed and slipped out before Steve closed the door behind him, leaving it open just a crack.

“Steve?” Bucky asked.

Steve deposited something at the end of the bed, but in the dark, Bucky couldn’t see what it was. The bed dipped as Steve crawled in, lifting the sheets and sliding over until he was straddling Bucky. Bucky jerked, his eyes going wide. Not really sure what was happening, he sat up, his hands going up to hold Steve still, his hands moving to his ribs.

“What are you…?”

“Just tell me no,” Steve said. “If you don’t want this.”

Steve pressed Bucky down again. The breadth of Bucky’s chest versus the small arms that held him down would be an obvious match any other time, but Bucky was powerless against the gentle pressure.

In the split-second before their lips touched, Bucky’s eyes were already closed. When Steve kissed him, it was like his entire body went into shutdown. He was by no means a lonely man, but it was as if he’d gone a hundred years without touching anyone. With a taste for it, he kissed back, feeling Steve’s tongue as it teased his.

Steve broke away and Bucky made a little sound, bereft and mournful. Steve pulled the rim of his collar down to kiss and nip at his collarbone.

“You can tell me no,” Steve promised.

“I’m not gonna do that,” Bucky said.

Steve’s hands roamed his torso, wandering under the fabric of Bucky’s v-neck as he kissed further up his neck. Bucky did the same, discovering the landscape of touch that was a back populated by scars, a bony spine, and wing-like shoulder blades, his ribs something Bucky could lace his fingers between.

Steve lifted Bucky’s shirt over his head, Bucky helping. Steve continued to kiss down his torso, slow, sometimes pressing his tongue down when he kissed his skin. He went down until he was at the lip of Bucky’s pajama pants, fingers curling over the fabric and beginning to tug.

And then it was real. It wasn’t just kissing, not just wandering hands. This was sex.

“Wha—wai—wait,” Bucky said as he felt the fabric fall over his hip.

Steve stared up at him. The light came in from outside between the slats of his shutters to reflect in hungry eyes. Bucky had to swallow, hard. It was like he was meant to be Steve’s lunch, and Bucky had interrupted it.

“We were never—,” Bucky struggled to start.

“It’s just sex,” Steve promised.

He wasn’t sure when Steve had grabbed a condom wrapper, or if he’d had it with him the entire time. But suddenly it was there in his hands, the wrapper dotted with little cartoony strawberries.

Steve stripped him of his pants and underwear in one go. Bucky was aware of the mild embarrassment of being naked while only half-hard. But it was enough. Steve tore open the wrapper with his hands and took Bucky’s cock in a light grip. He put it on the tip, rolled down some of the way.

Bucky’s head fell back on the pillow as Steve used his mouth to roll the condom the rest of the way on. Steve’s mouth felt _spectacular_ as it worked in tandem with his hand to wrap him up. Getting control of himself again, he forced himself up on his elbow, because it was too hot not to watch.

Steve worked him into complete hardness. It didn’t take long, Steve’s mouth hot and skillful, with a tongue that knew how to tease, even as he worked his head up and down.

When Steve stopped, Bucky’s muscles tightened in frustration. Then Steve crawled up the length of Bucky’s body and he kissed him again. Flavored condoms could always taste better, but from where he was sitting, that strawberry residue on Steve’s tongue was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

Steve leaned back and grabbed what he had deposited at the end of the bed. Another condom, a regular one this time, and a little bottle that Bucky knew was lube. That tightness in his hips strained harder.

Steve was still in his clothes and, for Bucky, that was unacceptable. He grabbed the edge of the white cotton tee and worked it up Steve’s body—

Steve grabbed his hand and stopped him. Confused, Bucky searched Steve’s face. Bucky remembered the scars that marked him, how hard it had been for him to take his shirt off to prove what had happened to him. He saw Steve’s adam’s apple bob, hard.

“I don’t mind,” Bucky said.

“I do,” Steve said.

This time it was the strength in Bucky’s arms that won out. He pulled Steve down. He kissed him deeply, and this time it seemed like Steve was the one whose breath ran out.

“What kind of asshole do you think I am?” Bucky murmured.

Steve’s eyes flicked up and down as he explored Bucky’s face. Bucky gave him nothing but understanding, in a quiet, steady glance.

Steve sat up, then reached behind his neck, pulling his shirt over his head. It took Bucky pulling it away from his grip for Steve to drop it. He ran his hands over Steve’s arms, as if trying to warm him before pulling him back down for another kiss. He found the edge of Steve’s briefs and began to work them down.

“I want you, Buck,” Steve said into Bucky’s mouth.

“Yes,” Bucky said. “Jesus, yes.”

Steve made short work of his briefs and Bucky heard them hit the ground with some force.

Steve took off the flavored condom, tied it off, and discarded it. He opened the heavy paper packaging of the other condom and rolled it on. Bucky could tell just by his grip that Steve was enjoying the excuse to have Bucky’s cock in his hand again. He slicked Bucky up and reached behind himself, a little gasp as he prepped.

Steve straddled him, and then lowered himself onto Bucky’s cock. Bucky’s breath hitched and his head fell back as he felt the tightness around him. His muscles taut, he suppressed the urge to thrust up just yet. He grabbed the edge of the mattress, feeling Steve take all of him in.

It took an awkward minute for Steve to get the feel for him. Then he began to rock his hips. Steve riding him like that was enough to get Bucky to bite his lips. Steve fell forward, and his fingers raked against Bucky’s chest.

“ _God_ , Bucky,” Steve said. “You got so—”

Unable to articulate better, he just grabbed at the solid muscles of Bucky’s chest.

Bucky had a flash of a sixteen year-old Steve, the day they came out to each other, the dizzying freedom of being able to talk about boys. And from that day on Steve had expressed favor for a specific _type_.

And Bucky remembered he hadn’t always looked like this.

Bucky pulled out and Steve gasped a disappointed, instinctual sound. Wrapping his arm around Steve’s waist, he rolled them over until Steve was on his back. Steve’s eyes were wide and he huffed as he hit the mattress. Then, realization in his eyes, he opened his legs, thighs pressing up against Bucky’s ribs. Bucky grabbed the pillow from beside him and tucked it under Steve’s hips.

Steve looked so good under him. He couldn’t keep his hands from roaming. The plane of his torso was soft, and he was flushed into a candy pink. When Bucky entered him like that, Steve’s eyes closed, his mouth in a silent, wide, ‘o,’ until finally he moaned. That sound travelled down his spine, right into his dick, and it was enough to make him worry about coming too soon.

It wasn’t like he was watching the clock, but it felt like they were fucking for ages. Steve tried to work with him, timing his own rolling hips with Bucky’s thrusts. Then, minutes into it, Steve put his hands up above his head, limbs limp, his eyes closing. His mouth was ever-open in heavy sighs and moans.

Bucky had never seen someone _submit_ so completely. It wasn’t even that he was passive. He arched his back and rocked his hips, encouraging Bucky at every turn. But he was so taken up with pleasure that he lazily spread himself out on the mattress, his body open and trusting.

Then Steve gasped, his ribs rising, and he grabbed Bucky by the forearms.

“I’m gonna come,” Steve said in one quick babble.

“Yeah?” Bucky egged on.

“Fuck it outta me. Yeah, just like that. Ah! _Fuck_.”

Steve shouted as he came, his hand wrapped hard around his dick. Bucky pulled out and Steve collapsed even more than he already had. Come pooled around his belly button and all Bucky could think about was licking it off. But with the amount of trouble Steve had gone to, Bucky thought better of it. All the same, the sight of it made the tension in Bucky’s dick unbearable.

“You can come on me,” Steve said.

The way Steve said it, conversational and simple, created a thrill through Bucky’s whole body. He slipped off his condom and tied it off.

He jerked himself off onto Steve’s belly. The release turned his brain to jelly, his limbs going boneless. It wasn’t the most intense orgasm he’d ever had, but he ranked it up there, and as he watched his come mingling with Steve’s, he made himself memorize the way it looked. Steve’s belly was concave has he panted, ribs rising, the come standing out on his perfect, pink skin. He would remember that. He needed to remember that.

“Oh my god,” was all Bucky could say.

He collapsed next to Steve, rolling on his back and staring up at his cracked ceiling. Steve pulled the pillow out from under his hips and threw it on the ground. Steve stretched out all the more, lazy and languid. Bucky felt it getting a little colder, but he was still flushed, both of their chests lifting and expanding as they breathed.

“I really needed this,” Steve said. “I really, really needed this.”

“Sure thing,” Bucky said. “Pal.”

_Pal_. That would echo in his consciousness forever, but he was too fucked-out to care.


	8. Chapter 8

Gunpowder hopped onto the bed the same time as a car horn sounded outside. Bucky startled, but sleepiness pulled him back down. He rubbed his eyes and groaned. He was lying on his back, comforter barely covering him, and the sun was in his eyes.

Steve was stretched out next to him, laying on his stomach and arching his back, exposed toes reaching for the edge of the bed. The cat wiggled in between them. Bucky rolled over until his head was right next to Steve’s.

“You still like your eggs sunny-side up?” Bucky asked.

“Mm,” Steve confirmed.

“Steve?”

“Mm?”

“That was amazing.”

Steve’s smile curled up lazily and he laughed deep in his throat without even opening his mouth.

“There’s something really hot,” Bucky continued. “About doing it with someone from high school.”

“‘ _Doing it_ ’,” Steve mocked.

Bucky leaned in and kissed Steve’s neck, once, twice, three times. He pulled back and pressed their foreheads together, smoothing Steve’s hair away from his forehead. They looked at each other with a strange newness, the morning light doing something to Steve’s big eyes, making them crisper, more intense.

Finding that he was ignored, Gunpowder took the opportunity to get between their faces and headbutt them. They both laughed and pet the cat under the neck and behind the ears. Satisfied, he flopped onto his side to better enjoy the attention.

Steve stared into his eyes again and there was a long, comfortable pause.

“I really like staying with you,” Steve said.

“I really like you staying with me, too,” Bucky echoed.

#

Popping and sizzling sounds filled the air as Bucky cooked breakfast. He stood over the pan in his boxers and a tee, hair still wet from the shower. Bacon was already cooked, and he delicately worked the sunny-side up eggs off of the pan and onto two slices of toast. Steve walked in, rubbing his wet hair with a towel and sitting down at the kitchen table. He poured himself a mug of black coffee. When he sat at the kitchen table, Gunpowder leaped into Steve’s lap, his tail swishing back and forth. Bucky could hear a deep purr as the cat rolled into a ball.

It was the first time he’d seen Steve with an appetite. After handing him the plate of bacon, eggs, and toast, he wolfed it down.

“You know,” Steve said after swallowing his toast. “Last time you cooked for me, we nearly burned your apartment building down.”

“I’ve come a long way since then,” Bucky said. “I did eventually have to learn how to take care of myself.”

“What were we even making that day?”

“We’d just heard of deep-fried Twinkies.”

“Oh god! That was it. The oil got everywhere. It was so gross. The Twinkies just melted anyway. We didn’t know about the batter. We just thought you put it in a pan with some vegetable oil.”

Steve laughed through another bite of eggs and toast. A comfortable silence sat in the room as they ate. Bucky was glad of it. The last thing he wanted things to be was awkward. Sleeping with your best friend was territory potentially fully loaded with mines. They’d danced over that field without sweeping a single one.

So far.

Unless he’d been reading every interaction with other men wrong, Bucky knew he had a way of gazing. It had an effect on some men that way. It made Steve look down and give his attention to the cat. Bucky smiled, just slightly. It wasn’t as if he had been shy the night before.

“So, I guess this means you don’t have a boyfriend,” Bucky said.

Steve laughed, a hard, bitter sound, though the smile that wrapped around that laugh was genuine.

“Nah,” Steve said. “I’m not really ‘boyfriend material.’ I mean—there have been guys that stuck around some, but I never really—No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”

Steve reached over and took another slice of Bucky’s bacon. Bucky slid the plate closer to Steve, offering him the rest. Steve chewed, thoughtful, before he could look Bucky in the eye.

“How about you?” Steve asked. “Anybody special?”

Bucky shrugged, nearly up to his ears. “Couple guys. I got a little head-over-heels for a jerk straight outta the army, and then there was this doctor Sam hooked me up with. But I mean, I don’t have anybody right now. Obviously. Look at my apartment.”

“Your apartment’s fine.”

“Yeah, but a single guy definitely lives here.”

“I think you’ve got a good life here, Buck.”

Bucky gave another slighter shrug, and snatched the last piece of bacon.

“I can’t quite wrap my head around it,” Bucky said.

“Around what?” Steve asked.

“There was really nobody? Ever?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“So, there was someone.”

“I dunno. I haven’t thought about it for a long time.”

“It’s just that, growing up, I figured you’d be the one to have settled down early. Make a life with some nice guy, maybe adopt some kids.”

“Bucky, I lost my virginity in a bathroom stall. I don’t think I’m the guy either of us thought I’d be.”

An image came into Bucky’s head—Steve and some burly guy, crammed inside a stall. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking burly, but there it was. He pictured it all in one sharp, vivid image. Steve bent over and grabbing the tank, the noise of other people in the bathroom, graffiti on the wall. The agony on Steve’s face, if he’d been totally unprepared.

It didn’t fit. But then again, the previous night had come out of left-field, too.

That seemed to bring the mood down some. Steve was looking at his plate, laying down his unfinished bacon, wiping his hands off with a paper towel. Bucky recognized regret when he saw it, and shame in the downcast eyes and sloped shoulders. It was quite a thing to drop, private and a little forsaken.

Bucky decided to level the playing field a bit.

“You think that’s bad?” Bucky said. “I lost my virginity to Gilmore Hodge.”

“ _What_?” Steve asked, forgetting himself. “Gil? From the football team? That bully that put Clancy Watkins’ textbook in the toilet? That asshole? I didn’t know he was even gay.”

“He wasn’t. That’s why it sucked.”

“I can’t believe you lost your virginity to a straight dude.”

“I know. _I know_. It just happened. I was his experiment. I wish it had gone any other way.”

Steve wagged his finger. “You shoulda waited. You can’t give your one special gift to just anyone.”

Bucky grabbed his stomach and laughed. Steve picked up and ate the rest of the last stick of bacon through a smile.

“Kinda wish it had been you,” Steve said.

Bucky felt his cheeks flush. “Yeah? You don’t think that would have been weird?”

“I dunno. I just—I didn’t think of you that way when we were kids. Ever.”

“Yeah. Me, neither.”

It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t think it was a lie from Steve, either. He’d never noticed Steve, not like that. They were both gay, and both lonely kids with libidos and everything, but he’d never looked at Steve. Not until now. Here he was wanting to crawl over the table just to taste his collarbones again, and at sixteen it never even occurred to them to practice kissing.

“Maybe…,” Steve began. He struggled to start again, his head twisting as he tried to put the words together.

“Yeah?” Bucky said.

“Maybe we had to be these people first. I know you don’t wanna think so, but we’re different.  You’re still Bucky, but rounded out, like you said. I’m different too. We kind of meet in the middle.”

“That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. Listen, Steve—I gotta stop treating you like we’re seventeen and having a sleepover. We’re in some serious shit. We’re different. And I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me—”

“I’m not keeping secrets.”

“Yeah, you are. But you can keep ‘em. I’m not gonna drag ‘em out of you. I trust you, okay? If it doesn’t have anything to do with the case, they’re yours to keep to yourself. I just want you to know I’m not _that_ different. I’m not just the PI you hired. I’m your friend. Maybe with a few benefits now, but—yeah. I don’t have to be your best friend. I just wanna be there for you. That’s all.”

Steve nodded, a mote of fear in his eye. But then he smiled and nodded his head, slight, teasing.

“With benefits, huh?” Steve teased.

Bucky smiled over the ridge of his coffee mug. “Shut up and get dressed. We’re going to work.”

#

Steve helped him move the TV and the media shelves to expose the empty wall. Bucky pulled a Canon printer-slash-copier out of the closet and set it up. Steve began to sort through his files, organizing piles by murder files, experimentation documents, and financial records, finding his own way to sort any miscellany.

Bucky began to pin information on the wall. Neatly arranged on one side was basic information about Triskelion—its function, its holdings, its public records. Below that was the same for Tesseract, then for Red Room. Finally there was HYDRA, separated from the rest like patient zero.

Underneath that, pictures of the experimentation victims—their healthy pictures in neat three-by-five rectangles. It was good to see their faces, but not good to consider they would have to go through and put a red ‘x’ through their face, depending on what they found. Pietro Maximoff was among them, looking smarmier than he had when he met them. He wondered what they had done to bring him so low.

On the right side of the wall were the murder victims, accompanied by a picture of them as they were in life—all nine, including Erskine. Then, below them, the photocopy of the scrap of paper that described subject 21, and a photograph of the room and the bone fragment they had found in the basement.

“I thought there would be red strings, or something,” Steve said.

“No one does that,” Bucky said. “Well. One guy in the office. It works for him. He looks like a frickin’ conspiracy theorist, though. Me? I like post-its.”

Bucky scribbled a word on a blue post it-note. He stuck it on the square that said “HYDRA” and rubbed it so it would stick flat.

_Purpose?_

“That’s where we start,” Bucky said. “We don’t know what these experiments were for. That’s what we figure out next.”

“How’re we gonna do that?” Steve asked. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for years.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t had me around. This is kind of my job. There wasn’t a lot you could have done, living off the grid. I have resources you don’t have. We’re going to check corporate records, look at criminal records for employees, and see if we can find some of Sitwell’s whistleblowers and see if they’re legit.”

“You can do all that?”

“That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.”

“How do we get the whistleblowers? We can’t ask Sitwell for his sources.”

“No, we can’t. But if I make it obvious what I’m looking for, they’ll come to me.”

“You sure that’s smart?”

“I know how to watch out for myself. Don’t worry. I’ve got aliases I can use. They won’t know who I am until I’ve followed them around and vetted them. _Then_ we can say we have ourselves a whistleblower.”

“Until then?”

Bucky came forward again and pinned a new piece of paper to the wall, underneath the tree of HYDRA activity. It was the photocopy of the scrap of paper they’d found in the basement.

“If we can figure out what these serums and experiments were for,” Bucky said. “We might get a chance to get ahead of them. Knowing what they’re doing might help us figure out what they’re going to do next.”

“I never knew what it was all for,” Steve said. “Erskine didn’t even know, and they were using his research. All they ever told him was that they were building a better future, for all mankind. Just like that. They gave me the same speech.”

“Maybe they killed him because he finally found something out.”

“How do we find out what Erskine knew? We can’t exactly ask him.”

“That might not be true. There are other ways for the dead to talk. I know you were in Chicago, but when was the last time you talked to him?”

“The morning before he died.”

That was sooner than Bucky had thought. Something stirred in the back of Bucky’s mind. It was that instinct again, the one Banner said made him a good investigator. He listened to that little hum that told him that something was _off_.

“Steve?” Bucky said, deep and firm.

There was a profound pause where Steve looked like he had eaten dessert before dinner and was hoping no one would notice he was still chewing the cookie.

“Yeah?” Steve said.

“This is a lot easier when you’re straightforward with me.”

Steve shrugged, exaggerated.

“You’re a piss-poor liar,” Bucky said.

“I’m not—,” Steve began. Then he put his hands on his hips, biting his lip and looking down at the ground. “We didn’t talk about what you think we talked about.”

“If it’s relevant to what’s happening—”

“It’s not. It was a personal conversation.”

“About what.”

“ _Please_.”

Bucky reeled back. It was such a desperate cry. There was so little of his life that Bucky knew about, but he could see the privacy that Steve needed. Sure, they had slept together. Sure, they had known each other since they were seven. But if Steve said it was private—

“Fine,” Bucky said. “It’s private. I won’t ask again.”

“…Really?” Steve said.

“Just promise me it doesn’t have anything to do with his death.”

“I promise.”

That wasn’t a lie. Even if it was, there was nothing malicious in it.

“Good,” Bucky said.

“But there is something I’m not telling you. And I’m sorry, but—Erskine’s research. We need to go into what it was, exactly. Why they would kill him for it.”

“That’s a place to start. Honestly, there’s been so much flying at us, I didn’t even think to ask.”

“Erskine was a bio-engineer. He’s been working on things like the human genome project and making GMO crops for places with high rates of starvation and malnutrition. He was a good man. And he was _smart_. One of those guys who’s so smart it’s like he was an artist. But whatever he was doing with his research… I don’t think he had any idea that HYDRA was using it until they were too powerful to stop.”

“And when he found out—”

“He did whatever he could to get us out.”

“The cops said it was a robbery gone wrong. That doesn’t mean the thieves found what they were looking for. How well did you know the doc?”

“Pretty well. I mean—as well as you can know someone, I guess.”

“So if we went over there, you might know something about where he might hide things.”

Steve swallowed, hard. “Maybe.”

 _Lying_.

“Then let’s go over there.”

“You can do that? Won’t the scene be sealed?”

“To us.”

Steve’s brow furrowed in a silent question.

#

They met Sam outside Erskine’s Brooklyn apartment. Standing next to him was a blonde woman, tall and striking.

“Sharon,” Bucky said, shaking her hand.

“Hey, Bucky,” Sharon said. “This him?”

“Steve Rogers,” Steve introduced himself with a firm shake.

“You know,” Sharon said. “This one’s mentioned you a fair few times.”

“Really?” Steve said, no longer surprised by that.

“Okay, okay,” Bucky said. “Can we go break the law now?”

Sharon stayed downstairs in the street, her phone at the ready while Steve and Bucky went upstairs with Sam. Sam took out a pocket knife and cut the seal on the door. The three of them went inside.

It was certainly the apartment of an old man. Everything was out of fashion, likely bought twenty years ago and well-maintained. There was a neat order to things, but it was still lived-in, comfortable.

Steve stopped mid-stride, as if he had hit an invisible net. Bucky swallowed as he looked at where Steve was staring.

The linoleum of the small kitchen had been scrubbed. No blood was left, but the residue of the chemicals the crime scene cleanup crew had used was dried in whorls where the blood had been. Steve exhaled, his shoulders dropped, mouth opened to let out a mournful breath.

“You okay?” Bucky asked.

“I’ll be okay,” Steve said in a quiet breath.

“Alright,” Sam announced. “Let’s make this quick. We’re already not supposed to be here. Don’t touch too much stuff. I know it seems like nobody would care, but someone might notice.”

Bucky turned to Steve, who was turning and looking around the apartment.

“I know you haven’t been here,” Bucky said. “But you knew the man. If you can think of where he hid anything—”

“Lemme walk around,” Steve said.

“Just keep your hands in your pockets,” Sam said.

Steve nodded and put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Bucky followed suit and gave Steve a small smile, and Steve mirrored him. Steve stepped further into the apartment, his eyes scanning the rooms.

It was a three-bedroom apartment. The first room in the house was Erskine’s study—not quite as neat as the front room where he would have entertained and spent his time relaxing. It was the landscape of genius.

“I’m gonna take some pictures,” Bucky said. “There weren’t any of this in his file.”

Steve made a small nod of approval. Bucky wasn’t sure why he’d asked Steve’s permission in the first place. It was just something that felt right, like he was more in Steve’s domain than his own.

It was more or less as mystifying as the scrap of paper they had found. Notes on genetic sequences, chemical reactions, and radiation. Bucky was regretting his career path, in a way. He’d always excelled at science in school, and he still remembered the chemical elements that he saw jotted down on Erskine’s post-its and paper scraps. How it all fit together—that was something else entirely. He snapped the photos and began to think about who he might know that he could possibly get to decipher all of this.

Steve wandered the room, scanning the walls and the furniture, hands still in his pockets, unable to touch anything.

It occurred to Bucky that whomever the killer was, they hadn’t been instructed to retrieve any of the information that was out in the open. With a killer so sloppy, the place would have been ransacked, books on the ground, shelves and drawers dug into, pillows sliced open. A part of Bucky wished they could do just that, upturning everything. But Sam’s case had to be solid. No one else could think anything in the apartment had been touched.

Bucky wondered why there was a guest bedroom. An old man living in Brooklyn, with gentrification making rent skyrocket, could do better with having a two-bedroom. The guest bed was neat, looking unslept in, perfectly rectangular and folded in hospital corners, with an afghan at the foot. There were paintings on the wall, and a neat oak dresser with a doily sheet on it.

“He must have had family over a lot,” Bucky supposed out loud.

“I guess so,” Steve said with a shrug.

There was something to that, something withheld, but Bucky put his suspicions away for the moment. There was no reason to try and harass something out of Steve before he knew what Steve was about to admit to.

Bucky took a pair of blue latex gloves out of his pocket. He stopped just short of putting them on, grabbing the handles of the dresser drawers and pulling them out, seeing nothing in the drawers, not even anything stored for convenience.

The underneath of the bed was empty, and he pulled up the mattress to find nothing underneath but a sock that was eaten through with holes.

He checked the closet and found empty hangers, but there were boxes in the shelving above them. They were neatly labelled with dates. He pulled one down.

“What is that?” Steve asked.

Bucky opened the box. “Family photos,” he said. “But I should check the rest, just to be sure.”

“You want my help?”

“Can you reach them?”

“Shut up.”

“Here, put some gloves on.”

Bucky threw a second pair of latex gloves at Steve, who caught them in mid-air. He slid them on and helped Bucky go through the boxes. Nothing. A lot of nothing but sentimental things. As it went on, Bucky thought less and less about a victim in the abstract. This nice man began to take shape in his head, and it became harder and harder for Bucky to disconnect. Perhaps that was a good thing, Bucky figured. He didn’t want them to forget what they were doing this for. He’d been a friend of Steve’s for a reason. It wasn’t just that he’d rescued Steve from HYDRA, something that Bucky would be grateful for the rest of his life. It was that this was a person, with people who cared about him, and who had cared for so many.

He paused on the image of Erskine with a European backdrop, likely the German city he’d come from originally. This was a younger version of him, a child sat on his lap. Not a daughter. The man had never married or had children, that much was in his file. Family of some kind, he figured. But he had remembered so few people at his funeral. He hoped it was because of how many were overseas.

“Nothing?” Steve asked.

“Nothing,” Bucky said, only half meaning it.

They put the boxes back exactly as they’d found them and went on to the bedroom.

It was less neat, having been lived-in, but the bed had been made, there was folded laundry on a bench at the end of the bed. Bucky dug around the drawers in the bench and found they were full of blankets and winter clothes. More personal belongings in the closet shelf, regular clothing in the drawers. The man didn’t seem to have any dirty little secrets. He wondered how good a person could possibly be. If he had faults, it was in his personality, or in his past.

“Guys,” came a voice from the living room.

They came out to see Sam hanging up his phone.

“That was Sharon,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“The guy that’s supposed to be working this case—“

“The shitheel?” Bucky said.

“The shitheel, yeah. He’s on his way.”

“But we haven’t found anything yet,” Steve said.

“This is all the time we get. I’m sorry.”

“Wait. Just give me another minute.”

“Steve,” Bucky said. “We gotta get out of here, or Erskine’s case will be compromised.”

“Just let me think. I gotta think.”

They went quiet while Steve looked around. Bucky watched him get more and more crestfallen. He was about to open his mouth and try to convince him that it was time to go. Then something sparked in Steve’s eyes. It wasn’t realization, exactly. What passed over that face was a naked determination.

“It has to be there,” Steve said, and then went into the kitchen.

“Be where, Steve?” Bucky asked.

Steve didn’t answer, just hopped up on the kitchen counter with a massive grunt. Bucky came up behind.

“What is he doing?” Sam asked, annoyed but curious.

“Steve?” Bucky echoed.

There was a recipe box in the cupboard above the spices. Steve hopped down, clutching the old, worn blue box in his hands. Steve opened the box and began sifting through it. Bucky felt his jaw clutch without his noticing until his jaw was sore.

“How did you know that was there?” Bucky said.

“It has to be in here,” Steve said, avoiding the question for the moment. “He always said—he always said it was just like making lemon meringue.”

Steve flipped through the recipes, as if it were the most urgent dinner party disaster the world had ever known. Then, under “desserts,” Steve stopped, leaning in to look at the cards. He pulled a stack out.

“Erskine didn’t like desserts,” Steve said.

For someone who didn’t like desserts, it was a thick pile. The cards weren’t covered in recipes. It was a stack of chemical symbols and abbreviations.

Steve looked up to see two stern faces staring at him. Steve must have been suddenly aware that he was standing in between two detectives, and, seasoned or not, they both knew a coincidence was never a coincidence. Steve made his jaw firm.

“We can’t let HYDRA get their hands on this,” Steve said.

Bucky locked eyes with Sam. They both had the same upset on their face, and the same annoyance. Their silence made Steve freeze with discomfort.

“I’ll put it back,” Sam said, taking the recipe box. “This looks like something from your end of the investigation.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky said, taking the stack of cards from Steve’s hands and slipping them into his pocket, keeping eye contact with those defiant, blue eyes the entire time.

#

“How many times are we going to have this conversation?” Bucky asked.

They walked down the road, away from Erskine’s apartment.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I should have told you I had a feeling where those were.”

“Damn right, you should have. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking we’d get to the kitchen eventually. I couldn’t get to it before.”

“Couldn’t get to it before? You—”

Bucky stopped in the middle of the street. He turned to Steve, who managed to shrink in his body while being steadfast in his defiant expression.

“I knew it had to be in the apartment,” Steve said. “Because I’d been staying with him for a year.”

The only thing Bucky remembered doing before he grabbed Steve by the arm and dragging him in the awning of a shop was his own sharp intake of breath.

“I picked you up at the airport,” Bucky said. “You were in Chicago.”

“I took a cab to the airport,” Steve said. “That way it would look like I just came from somewhere. I’ve never been on a plane.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I’m the one who found him, Bucky.”

Bucky’s eyes flashed wide. He ran his hand over his mouth.

“The spare bedroom—”

“I packed up everything. I made the room look like no one was sleeping in it. I grabbed as much of my evidence as I could. I just couldn’t get to Erskine’s notes because—the body—”

“They probably have your fingerprints, you know that?”

“I’m not in the system. And I don’t plan to be.”

“You don’t plan to? You notice anything about your plans lately?”

“Bucky, I know you think I shouldn’t have lied, but—”

“A _year_. You were in Brooklyn for a _year_. We could have bumped into each other on the damn street. And you never thought to look me up?”

“I did. I thought about it a lot. How do you think I knew you were a PI? I just thought—”

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. You don’t think. You just do, and damn the consequences.”

“Hey! What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re breaking the law, you’re lying, you’re stealing things from crime scenes and even throwing away your shoes because you might get caught. You’re not exactly the picture of honesty.”

“I’m doing it so I can help you. I’m doing it because we have to do it this way, because these people might be watching the police. Because these are powerful people, and you know that. Don’t pretend like what I’m doing—what I’m doing _to help you_ —is anything like you lying to me because you think it’s the only way you can get anything out of me. That shit is for other people. I’m not other people, and you know that, or you wouldn’t have gotten into my bed last night.”

There was a fight going on inside Steve. It was as easy as reading the headline of a paper, a big bold text that said, “Steve Rogers Regretting His Idiotic Fucking Decisions.”

“I shouldn’t have called you,” Steve said.

“You needed help,” Bucky said.

“No. I’ve been using you.”

“Steve. Asking for help isn’t using people. It’s asking for help. Let me help.”

Steve’s eyes flashed. It was as if that had never occurred to him. Bucky felt a pit of guilt in his stomach. He never meant to yell at Steve, but he was pissed. It wasn’t that he thought his anger wasn’t justified. It was, as far as he was concerned. He’d just forgotten how screwed up Steve could get over his pride.

Bucky’s jaw clenched. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to—he did, he had every second since the night before. He checked everything about Steve’s body language, the look in his eyes. There was nothing but an apologetic face.

Steve’s face ticked. “I’ve never been to Chicago.”

“Yeah, I figured. I should have clocked it when you spent zero time talking about it, or anyone there. So where have you been?”

“A few of the kids who escaped were in a squat, like Pietro. Then there started to be less and less of us. Then when my friend, when she—there was no one else and Erskine was the natural fit. It was weird, coming back here. It had been seven years, and I’d only been out for two. But I didn’t even leave my room most of the time. And I thought about you, a lot. Then I saw you were a PI, and they gave out a phone number at your firm. When I found Erskine, I just knew there was only one person I could trust.”

“But you don’t trust me.”

“I do. I swear, I do.”

“If you had trusted me, you would have told me about all of this from the start. Especially _being in the apartment with a body_.”

“What was I supposed to do? ‘Hey, Bucky, I haven’t seen you in eight years. Can you help me hide from a multi-national who just killed my friend? I would sure appreciate it. How’s your mom?’ Would you have believed any of that? Would you have called the cops? There’s a reason I didn’t contact you until you were off the force, you know. The way I did things, that’s the way it had to be done.”

It was no small part of Bucky which knew that Steve was right. Waltzing into his life with a story like that, it would have thrown him for a loop. Bucky grabbed Steve by the bicep again, and though Steve tugged against him, he didn’t exactly do his best to break free. Bucky pulled him further down a staircase. The shop in the sublevel of the building was closed, and in the indent in the sidewalk they had some shadow of real privacy.

“Why did you sleep with me last night?” Bucky said.

Steve’s eyes flashed wide and then the landscape of his face changed. His brows were down and his mouth was firm.

“That has nothing to do with any of this,” Steve said.

Bucky felt bad about it as soon as it had come out of his mouth. But if he hadn’t asked it would have hung over him, swinging like the sword of Damocles with no clue when the strand would break.

“I just don’t know with you anymore,” Bucky said.

It was like a shock had gone through Steve, the way his whole body jerked. Then it was back, that thing Bucky hadn’t been able to define, with the way his eyes cast down and his brow seemed to buckle. Bucky realized he could call that thing Sorrow.

“There are things I haven’t told you,” Steve said. “There’s more. Lots more. I don’t know how to lay it out. I don’t know how to make it take shape. Some of it’s got nothing to do with what’s happening—except it’s all HYDRA. It’s been HYDRA. I don’t even know if there’s a part of my life they haven’t touched. I’ll tell you everything, I promise. It’s just that some of it—”

“You gotta know you can tell me everything,” Bucky promised.

“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

It screwed him up, how he had never considered fear. Not in its complete form. There was, obviously, the fear of being caught in a lie. And Steve was bad at lying. Though, as Bucky was learning, not terrible at omitting. This was a different kind of fear. Fear of Bucky _knowing_. Knowing what, he wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it hung darkly, like a mirror reflecting the darkness of another room.

“Just swear to me,” Bucky said. “Swear to me that last night wasn’t nothing.”

“I swear, Bucky, I—,” Steve’s mouth hung open, as he realized he was putting his mouth to the wrong use.

He pulled Bucky down and kissed him. Bucky let himself be dragged under, putting his hands up on the concrete as Steve pulled him into the corner. It was all he could do to not buckle completely. He’d never imagined Steve would be such a tender kisser while being able to steer him like a boat. No part of Bucky was in charge of how he wrapped his arms around Steve’s ribs, for his hand to seek out Steve’s hair, soft and bristling short and then growing long. He was certainly not going to do anything that would stop Steve’s tongue from exploring, their open mouths going flush so the only air they were breathing was each other’s.

“God damn homosexuals,” cried a high, shaking voice.

Bucky broke away, reeling back and putting his hand over his lips. They both looked up the stairs to see a woman, probably in her seventies, coming down the stairs with keys in her hands. Bucky looked at the door behind him, at a sign that read, “back in twenty minutes.” He’d wondered why the antique shop had been closed on a weekday.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, then adding: “Ma’am.”

“Every other day I swear somebody thinks my staircase is their damn living room,” the woman complained, brushing past them.

“We didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Steve promised.

“Brooklyn’s just not the same. Don’t care how you get your rocks off but folks used to cool it with the PDA.”

“Again,” Steve said. “Sorry.”

They walked quickly up the stairs, leaving the still-complaining woman to open her shop in peace.


	9. Chapter 9

_Steve handed Bucky another napkin from the Kleenex box. Bucky held his bleeding nose up to stop the flow. The pain made him roll his eyes. He then stared down at Steve, who had one nostril stopped up with tissue and was flexing his bruised and cut fists. He regarded them as things he’d never seen before._

_They weren’t just hiding from Gilmore Hodge, but from Becca and her friends’ curiosity. Bucky’s room was a sanctuary, even Becca not being brave enough to pass the threshold. They sat on the floor, not wanting to bloody Bucky’s sheets, though the rug had suffered a bit._

_“Mom’s gonna be pissed,” Steve said._

_“Your mom’s a saint,” Bucky said. “I’m the one whose ass is grass.”_

_“They said junior year would be easier.”_

_“What are you talking about? It’s off to a great start.”_

_“At least it didn’t happen at school. We’d be suspended for sure.”_

_“Do you think there’s gonna be a bruise?”_

_Steve looked at Bucky through a narrowed eye. “Buck, your eye is already swelling shut.”_

_“Ah, fuck,” Bucky said with the relish of a kid who’s not supposed to be swearing._

_“Maybe we should get ice packs.”_

_Bucky laid down on the ground and Steve left the room. Bucky felt the blood going into the back of his throat, and it made him feel a little sick. Steve came back a minute later with two bags, one of corn and the other of peas, with two dishtowels to wrap around them. Bucky hissed as he put the peas on his eye. Steve held the bag of corn to his lips. He’d gotten it in the mouth, and luckily retained his teeth. His jawline was starting to purple and he tried not to move it—when he wasn’t talking, that was._

_“You know,” Steve said. “You don’t always have to take a beating on account of me.”_

_“Come on, Steve,” Bucky said._

_“But your face—”_

_“I’m still prettier than you.”_

_There was a long pause where Bucky could see Steve chewing on a thought._

_“I’m sorry Gil called you a—”_

_“Hey. I’m fine. Comes with bein’ out, I guess. But you didn’t have to swing at him.”_

_“I didn’t even think about it.”_

_“Relax. We both threw down.”_

_“But we won, right?”_

_“They ran home like fucking chickens.”_

_If Bucky were being honest, it wasn’t clear if there was an actual winner. Both parties had scattered when they saw adults come by the yard. There was no telling if they were bystanders or teachers, and nobody was going to stick around to find out. They’d disappeared through alleyways, past fences and over railings. Bucky had stuck by Steve as he navigated alleys like a mouse who’d memorized a cheese maze. There was no one who knew the back ways like Steve. In no time, they were coming up the back of Bucky’s apartment building, snaking around and avoiding Becca and her after-school friends in the living room, who were probably waiting for Winnie Barnes to come home so they could pounce._

_But in the meantime, it was quiet._

_Pretty sure the bleeding had stopped, Bucky took the tissues away from his nose. He touched the edge of his nostril. It was hardened with dried blood and snot. But it wasn’t flowing anymore._

_A click and a bang happened, followed by a long “mooooom!” that precluded whatever it was that Becca and her friends were telling their mother._

_“Ugh, god,” Bucky said._

_“I’m the one who threw the first punch,” Steve said. “I’ll take the blame.”_

_“We both fought.”_

_“But I swung first.”_

_“I’m not letting you alone on this. I’m just not. We’re in trouble together, or it doesn’t work.”_

_“Bucky—”_

_“I’m not givin’ you a choice.”_

_“Buck.”_

_“Steve.”_

_Steve made a face at the way Bucky had mocked his tone. But something else happened—a softening of will, and his breath rattled through his nose._

_“I’ve always got your back,” Bucky promised. “How many more times have I got to prove that to you?”_

#

“Hey, caaat!” Bucky yelled into his apartment.

There was no reply.

Bucky’s brow quirked. Steve was close behind him, closing and locking the door behind them. He had expected to hear bickering at him, Gunpowder chattering for leaving him so alone. Instead, there was silence.

He walked down the hall into his living room. Gunpowder stared out at him from under the couch, his green eyes reflective as they darted around.

“Hey, there you are,” Bucky said.

Crouching down, he reached for him. Gunpowder made a noise deep inside his throat, an angry rumble that made Bucky reel back.

All the hairs on his neck stood up.

The air was still after a deep inhale of breath from behind him.

“Bucky!” Steve cried.

Bucky whirled around just in time to dodge the knife that slashed at him. An arc of silver was all he could see before he was at a safe distance from the knife. Whoever it was, he’d just leapt from the open door of his dark bedroom.

He hadn’t backed away quick enough. He was grabbed by the scruff of his jacket, and pulled right up to the face of the stranger. The man’s teeth were seething with spittle, his cheekbones sharp and features ragged, and he had stubble and dark, greasy hair. The knife, gleaming and clean, was mere inches from Bucky’s face.

“Somebody really wants to put a hurt on you,” the stranger said. “Are you ready for your pain?”

Bucky slammed him in the face with his forehead. The man howled and reeled back. Bucky stumbled one step, but stood his ground.

There was a cry and then a huff as Steve went for the man’s legs, sacking him like a football player. The man’s knees buckled out of surprise more than Steve’s strength. He fell, but then so did Steve.

It all happened at once. Bucky pulled his handgun out of his jacket and the man grabbed Steve by the neck, pulling him close. The knife was held against Steve’s neck.

Everything froze. Bucky aimed his handgun. Steve grit his teeth, fighting the instinct to kick and punch his way out of his predicament. Not possible, not with a knife pressed into his skin. The intruder’s eyes were wild. He laughed. He had the upper hand.

“Drop it,” the intruder said.

Shoulders hunched, arms level, Bucky blinked rapidly as he tried to think his way out of this. With a knife to a throat, the options were limited to one thing. He prayed that Steve wouldn’t do anything stupid, like try to get away. The risk of being cut was a certainty. There was nothing to do but negotiate. Fighting wasn’t an option. And Steve was all fight.

Of course, Steve fought.

Steve bit down on to the flesh in the intruder’s hand, and paid for it with blood. The intruder yelled and dropped the knife, but Bucky saw the line of red that appeared on Steve’s neck. Steve rolled away, grabbing the knife, and grabbing his wound.

“Steve!” Bucky said. “Steve are you okay?”

Bucky pointed the gun directly in the intruder’s face. The man was still smiling, but he stayed where he was, his hands going up, as if in a pantomime of surrender.

“I’m okay,” Steve said, scrambling up like a baby deer.

Steve took his hand away. Bucky saw a lot of red in his palm, but nothing was gushing. The wound was close to the jugular artery, but the cut hadn’t gone deep enough. A chill ran through him as he considered how few layers of tissue there were between Steve being just an idiot and Steve bleeding out on the floor.

The lecture would have to come later.

“There are zip ties in the kitchen,” Bucky said. “The drawer next to the stove.”

Steve nodded, and ran to the kitchen, still holding his neck and grasping the knife.

“Turn over,” Bucky commanded. “Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers.”

The man was still grinning, but obeyed. It sent a chill down Bucky’s spine. He’d done this before, that much was obvious. There was no hesitation and the motions came naturally. He knew just what to do, even spreading his ankles. Bucky began to pat him down.

“You know,” Bucky said. “If you got something in your pockets that pokes me, I’m gonna be really upset.

“I got somethin’ I can poke you with,” he said.

Bucky cracked him on the back of the skull with his gun, just hard enough, but not so hard that he’d knock him out. The man seethed and grumbled.

“Private citizen, asshat,” Bucky said. “And you’re in my apartment. Be smart again, see where that gets you.”

Steve came back and handed Bucky the zip ties. Bucky made a loop and grabbed the intruder by the hand.

It happened fast.

The intruder snatched his wrist and looped his leg around until Bucky was knocked on his back. Metal on wood, and the gun skittered away under the couch. The intruder had his left arm in a hold, with all the leverage. Bucky tried to pull away.

_Snap_.

There was a terrible, numb pause. Then Bucky screamed.

Never having broken anything before, he was unprepared for how deep the pain went, how much like shattering it was. His eyes were still closed against the pain when he felt the man on top of him. The man grinned again.

“I’m gonna have fun with you,” the intruder said.

The intruder pulled something from his pocket. The brass knuckles slipped onto his fingers. There was something strange about them, strange and ugly. Bucky squinted and realized the fingers were actually rings of bones, and the hammer of the knuckleduster was one long, blackened femur. Blackened as if it had been burned.

The shape of a brand flashed in Bucky’s mind. Long, straight lines with two dots on the end.

The man pulled his fist back.

Bucky heard Steve shout, and then the intruder screamed, rolling off him.

Steve had stabbed him in the thigh. He’d lost the grip and it was still sticking out of his leg.

“Frickin’ stabbed me!” cried the intruder.

Steve punched him in the jaw. It wasn’t a heavy blow, but Steve’s entire will went into it, throwing down the way Bucky always taught him to fight. A swell of pride went through him, just before another wave of pain. Bucky pushed himself up, holding his forearm to his chest.

The intruder grabbed the knife in his thigh, but it wasn’t like in the movies. There would be too much pain to pull it out. He wobbled. There was no telling how much strength he had left, but Bucky reeled back, not taking any chances.

“He’ll send someone else, you know,” the man said. “I’m not the last. I’m the first. I’m the message. There are more men like me out there. He’ll send another and another, until you’re a smear and a memory.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said. “Let ‘em come.”

The man got up and Bucky and Steve could only watch, wide-eyed as he ripped the knife out of his leg. He looked wild, manic, after what must have been a surge of pain. He stared right at them, like a cougar about to pounce.

And then he bolted.

Quiet gathered in the apartment. The carnage was the kind of thing he’d walked into in crime scenes. This was his own home. The aftermath felt vile, sickening. The things on his coffee table were on the floor, they’d knocked the rug around, at some point a lamp had fallen to lean on the wall. He saw his cat, crouched, afraid, under his kitchen table, staring at the living room in fear.

Bucky grit his teeth as another wave of pain went up his arm.

“Bucky?” Steve said. “Are you alright?”

Bucky’s eyes wandered again. His gaze stopped at the wall, the network of organized, neat sheets of paper laying out the conspiracy as they knew it so far. The fullness of the situation hit him.

“Gather everything up,” Bucky said. “All the research.”

“Why?” Steve asked.

“Get it all in the car. The police can’t see what we’re working on. We’re not ready yet. If anyone else sees this, if they take pictures— Where’s my—? I need to make a call.”

“In your pocket,” Steve said.

Steve went to the wall and began to carefully remove all of the clippings and pictures from the wall.

_Oh yeah_ , Bucky thought through the haze. He took the phone from his pocket and pulled up a contact. He heard the ringtone as if through a sieve.

“Sam Wilson,” said the voice on the other side.

“Hey, Sam,” Bucky said. “I’m going to need you to be my first responder.”

There was a pause, and then a heavy, labored sigh.

#

It was already uncomfortable to have a cast on. Bucky couldn’t imagine what he was going to do about the clammy skin and the itching. He endured it, flexing his right hand open and closed in frustration. Sam and Sharon were the only other people in the room once the nurse left, giving him another boost of painkillers. Bucky wanted to get as much out of the way as he could before they kicked in.

“The guy’s name is Brock Rumlow,” Sam said. “He left a good set of prints on that knife he dropped. You got him pretty good with that thing. He left a trail all the way out to the street.”

“Yeah, I feel real bad about that,” Bucky said.

Sharon smiled, close-lipped. “Your friend is pretty tough too, for a little guy.”

“Taught him everything he knows,” Bucky said.

Sam rolled his eyes. “You two barely survived him.”

“I did okay,” Bucky argued.

“Says the man with the broken arm.”

Bucky was suddenly wonderfully light, and more than a little cognitively impaired. He sighed. The painkillers were kicking in.

“Listen,” Bucky said. “I gotta ask you a favor.”

“I’m almost outta those,” Sam said.

“My cat. It’s about my cat, Sam.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Sharon said.

“Really?” Bucky said.

“You’re going to lay low, right? Can’t exactly bring pets along when you’re on the lamb.”

“Thank you, Sharon.”

Sam leaned in. “Sure you wouldn’t want me to get you a protective detail? That’s pretty easy to set up, once I make the case that he’s a hitman.”

“We gotta be on our own on our side of things, Sam.”

Sam nodded his head, crossing his arms over his chest, the way he always did when things got a little vulnerable. Sharon shared a glance with Bucky. She’d learned to spot it, too.

“This is getting complex,” Sam said.

“You’re telling me,” Bucky said. “Just connect Rumlow with someone from Triskelion. Once we can prove they’ve been the same people since HYDRA, or earlier, once we can prove these abuses have taken place—this whole house of cards is coming down, I swear to you.”

#

In the lobby, Steve was occupying himself with Bucky’s smartphone. He almost didn’t look up from the game of Candy Crush he was losing. He started and jumped up, handing Bucky his phone back. Bucky’s eyes lingered on the bandage on Steve’s neck. No stitches, but it had bled plenty. He glanced at his phone battery. Twenty-five percent.

“Thanks,” Steve said. “I was a little bored out here.”

Bucky made a grunt. He was tired and sore, painkillers making him sleepy. All he wanted to do was lie down, maybe forever.

“You gotta drive,” Bucky said.

#

They checked into the hotel under a pseudonym, saving a little money by making it a one-bed room. Fear of intruding into personal space seemed a thing relegated to the past. Ready for the long haul, they unpacked their clothes and brought out their research. The TV was moved off the dresser and they deposited it in a corner. Steve helped Bucky put all the information back up on the wall the way it had been in his apartment. They kept the victims of Rumlow aside, not needing any longer to work on that end.

Perhaps it was the drugs, but when Bucky stepped back, something about his setup didn’t quite sit right. He sat at the edge of the bed and stroked his chin, noting the stubble that had grown over the day. He heard rasping against his fingertips.

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “I probably won’t know until it hits me.”

“Should I put these up?”

Steve lifted the pile of paper that was Rumlow’s victims.

“Sam’ll take care of them,” Bucky promised. “Don’t you worry.

Steve’s smile was sad and small. He nodded. With a kind of reverence, he closed the folder as if it were a coffin lid and pushed the folder aside.

Bucky brought his eyes back up to the HYDRA conspiracy, the way it webbed out from the center.

“So now what we’ve got to do is cut off some of HYDRA’s heads,” Bucky said.

“You know, that’s not how the story goes,” Steve said.

“How does it go?”

“You cut off one head, it grows two. That’s what I remember from the story, anyway. It’s a metaphor. You have to go for the heart. Otherwise the monster just grows. That’s what I remember from the story, anyway.”

Bucky leaned back and narrowed his eyes. He sat up and took a piece of paper and wrote “HEART” on it in big, bold letters, and pinned it to the center of the wall. Then he took a small post-it note and wrote a question mark on it, sticking it to the end of the word.

“Any ideas?” Steve asked.

“A couple,” Bucky said.

He pulled up his laptop, and while it was powering, he plugged in the printer he had brought from home. He printed a document and a picture, clipping them to the paper with a paperclip.

“Alexander Pierce,” Bucky said. “CEO of Triskelion. That high up, he would have had to have been involved since the beginning.”

“I remember him. I googled him.”

“The thing is, he’s a public figure. He’s won humanitarian awards, been part of huge charity causes. Anybody who’s that public in what he does might be a figurehead. He might not be innocent, but we can’t be sure he knows everything that’s going on in his company. But if he’s really the mastermind—”

“How do we find out?”

“You ever done surveillance?”

“Like, follow him around?”

“You wouldn’t believe the things you can find out just by watching someone have lunch. In the morning, we park in front of his house. We’re waking up at four am.”

“Four am?”

“Better wash up.”

#

Bucky popped another round of aspirin into his mouth and chased it with a cup of water. He didn’t like the pain pills from the hospital, didn’t like the way they made him feel, so he hoped the over-the-counter Excedrin did the job.

He got undressed, finding it not as difficult a task as he thought it would have been with the cast. It only went up to just below the elbow. Though his wrist was stiff, he could get everything unbuttoned.

Bucky collapsed into bed, sleep coming over him in a wave. He was going to pass out then and there, but he felt the weight of Steve climbing into bed.

“I know what that feels like,” Steve said.

“I remember,” Bucky said. “I think you whined a lot less than me.”

“I think you’re right.”

Bucky laughed, striking Steve playfully on the arm.

Silence settled in the room. It was comfortable, filled with the humming of the air conditioning and the muffled nature of hotel rooms.

“Feels safe,” Steve said.

“It is,” Bucky said. “Nobody knows we’re here. Not even Sam. I swear.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You just said it feels safe.”

“Yeah. But I don’t trust it.”

Steve’s face fell. The silence was less comfortable. Bucky’s brows came down and he leaned in, scooting closer to him in the large bed.

“What is it?” Bucky asked. “Can’t sleep?”

Steve picked at his fingertips before snapping out of it.

“There are things I want to tell you,” Steve said.

“Sure.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You know you can tell me anything. Right?”

Steve rolled over slightly, looking up. He was peering past it, way past the ceiling or the roof. Bucky recognized someone gathering their thoughts, spinning something into shape before it was spoken.

Bucky reached up and took Steve by the chin. He gently pulled until they faced each other. From the look in his eyes, Steve was surprised, but not affronted.

“You know I got you,” Bucky promised.

Steve’s breath hitched. His eyes darted around, studying Bucky’s face, resting for a while on his lips, then locking eyes with him. Steve’s eyes were intense. Not just because they were a crisp blue, but because they were steady. Bucky was used to people looking away—shy or antisocial, or maybe just not wanting to give another person the time of day. Steve stayed with you. Not everybody liked that. Bucky was never put off by it. He liked that about Steve. He could look at you steady and tell you his mood, his thoughts, and the amount of respect he had for you.

Here was Steve, afraid. It didn’t look like trembling. It wasn’t the scream queen in a movie. It was a fort with a wall blasted out by a shell, stones crumbled, and boundary vulnerable.

For some reason, Steve was no longer able to hold that steady gaze. He looked down, and Bucky was sure he was gathering his thoughts.

“There was a man,” Steve said. “He was one of the doctors. I never knew his name. They didn’t exactly wear name-tags around there. They would come around, check how the tests were affecting us. They never talked. They scribbled on their clipboards and left.”

“They don’t sound like they took their Hippocratic oaths very seriously.”

Steve gave a small, sad smile. “’Do no harm’ wouldn’t have meant a lot to these guys.”

“This doctor was different, wasn’t he?”

“I saw him more regularly. He would be there in the beginning of the week, late at night. That was his shift. I’d tried to get out a few times, so at night, when there weren’t that many people around, they put me in the restraints.”

Heat went up Bucky’s spine. An image of Steve with ankle and wrist restraints on a cold bed for hours was vivid and put a bad taste in his mouth. He wanted to rave. Steve contained like that was unimaginable.

At the sound of Bucky’s patient silence, Steve sighed, ragged, and went on.

“I tried to talk to them sometimes. Trying to get them to say anything. I thought, maybe if they saw us as people, they’d do something. I don’t remember what I was saying to try and get a rise out of him. He found a way to shut me up, though.”

The first thought that came into Bucky’s mind was something violent, visceral. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone punched Steve to try and shut him up. Something was off, though. He felt it spreading through his body, an unease he couldn’t account for.

“He just grabbed me,” Steve said.

“Grabbed…?” Bucky began.

It all came to him. It was a picture of a different kind of violence. That unease spread through his body, bloomed, and went into his nerves. He thought of nettles covered in stinging barbs and wondered how one could have grown in his chest.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Steve continued. “I just laid there. It was like I was just watching, and it was someone else with his hand up their gown.”

Bucky forced his breath to be silent. He wanted to seethe, to swear. Steve wasn’t done. He had to wait. Even then, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.

“I think he just wanted me to know,” Steve said. “That he could do whatever he wanted with me.”

Everything Bucky could think up to say was inadequate. He felt sick. He wanted to scream. He wanted to pace around the room. He wanted to take Steve’s entire body up in his arms and hold him.

What he did was force himself still and wait for Steve. It seemed that for once, Steve didn’t have it to look him in the eye. But Bucky could see his face. He’d seen that look before—shell-shocked soldiers, domestic violence calls, assault victims he had to interview, when he wanted to give them nothing but peace. He’d been trained that it was like something you could crack with a touch, so it was important that you didn’t. Not even if it was killing you not to press your body to them, to shield them, hold their hand, cup their cheek.

But those were strangers. Those were people he had no business touching.

This had come home.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Steve said.

Silence hovered. Bucky still had no words. Even if Steve had given him a pass to be silent, it didn’t feel right.

Bucky moved Steve’s hair out of his face, then cupped his cheek. He was in no way sure if he was in the ballpark of doing the right thing. At first, Steve twitched, but then he relaxed into the touch. Steve laid his hand over Bucky’s, pressing his hand firmly against his face.

“The whole time?” Bucky asked.

“No,” Steve muttered. “Half a year. I memorized his shift. He was Saturday through Thursday. He didn’t always get to me, but—a few times a month. He seemed to always know when he could get away with it.”

The only salve for Bucky was that it wasn’t five years of it.

“Steve—,” Bucky began.

“There are still kids out there,” Steve said. “For three years, I’ve been out and that man could be doing anything to anyone. And if there’s one predator in HYDRA, there’s another, and another. I think about the kids they brought in, in our place. The ones who couldn’t get out.”

“You did everything you could. You and Erskine.”

“It could have been more.”

Steve still wouldn’t look at him. That red corrosion around the eyes was there and his breath was shallow and heavy.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t fought,” Steve said. “I fought him the whole time. I couldn’t check out. That didn’t come until later. I kicked and screamed. But it didn’t make much of a difference.”

All at once, Bucky’s throat became solid. He could barely swallow. His face broke open. He just wanted to be there, to give Steve something to trust, a blank slate to write his story on. _This isn’t about you_ , he said in his head. But he was mad. Pissed. He was sick and his skin was stinging. All he could do was think about the years where he had let the world shut him down when he said something is wrong.

_You could have stopped this_ , said a vicious voice in his head.

“I’m so sorry, Steve,” Bucky said.

Steve gave a bitter laugh. “Why? You didn’t do anything.”

_That’s the problem_ , Bucky thought, though he knew it wasn’t what Steve meant.

Steve shut his eyes up, curled up, not quite fetal, but he pressed his face into the mattress.

“They’re out there, Buck,” Steve said into the mattress. “And I’m just sitting here.”

“Steve—,” Bucky tried, but Steve went on.

“I had years to help them and I couldn’t even get out of bed most days. I was too sick and screwed up. I should have been stronger.”

“You went through all that and you’re still standing. You’re the strongest person I know.”

There was no crying. Somehow that was worse. He was trembling and gasped in for air against the mattress, his hand over his heart.

_Shit_ , Bucky thought.

“Hey, sit up,” Bucky said, helping Steve up.

“I’m fine,” Steve said.

“It’s like you’re not sure whether or not your heart’s going to stop or never stop jackhammering, right?”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’re having a panic attack, Steve. Let me be useful.”

Bucky helped him ride it out, asking Steve to match his breath as he practiced the breathing techniques he’d learned at the VA. Bucky talked to him of other things. Things far removed from what had brought it on. Of all the things he could think of, he recounted Becca’s wedding. It had been thick with drama, and he had anecdotes galore. Eventually, one of them made Steve laugh—at least his great-uncle Jerry was good for something. It was the beginning of the end.

In the absence of pain came quiet. Steve’s face was red, as if he’d just cried, but he hadn’t. A crying fit was still pent up, pressing up against his face, never to be released. Steve was trying to say something, but it was too soon. The danger of the tears manifesting was too near.

“You tired?” Bucky asked.

Steve nodded. He looked like a skinny toddler for a second, pouting and nodded, his eyelids heavy.

“I’m sorry you have to know this about me,” Steve said.

“Hey,” Bucky said, getting his eyes aligned with Steve’s. “I’m the one that asked you to tell me everything. I’m glad you did.”

Steve finally looked him in the eye again and there was confusion and curiosity.

“Why?” he asked.

“’Cause that’s too much weight for one person to carry,” Bucky explained.

Steve smiled, but it threatened to break into tears, so he looked down again, bangs falling in his face. Bucky grabbed Steve by his shoulders and rocked him back and forth.

“We’re going to beat them,” Bucky said. “They’re not going to win.”

“Swear,” Steve croaked out.

_I do_ , Bucky thought. _I swear. I swear that I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to find him and I’m going to set him on fire with the rest of HYDRA and I’m gonna watch him burn alive_.

“I swear.”

Steve’s smile was small, almost apologetic. Steve finally looked him in the eye again. His eyes were red, but soft, trusting. Bucky felt the weight of that trust. It wasn’t a burden, not at all. But it was a responsibility, to know someone, and to share their burdens. Bucky smiled back. He smoothed Steve’s hair back with his palm, a little roughly, and it made Steve chuckle just a bit, as he thought it would.

“I’m a mess,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said. “Join the club. We’re all messes, in our own ways.”

“But I’m really—”

“Steve, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

There it was again, the almost-sob that Steve got under control immediately. That redness got close to his face again and he bit his lip to keep it at bay. Steve passed it off as a laugh.

“Well, I feel really screwed up,” Steve said.

_I should have done more_ , Bucky thought again. _I should have made someone listen._

Bucky saw what Steve needed in that moment. It wasn’t Bucky’s self-pity. _This isn’t about you_ , was the mantra in his head.

“The bad things that happen to you shape you,” Bucky admitted. “Sometimes in ways you don’t expect. But they don’t got anything to do with who you are. You’re bigger than that. You’re so much bigger than what they did to you.”

Some part of that must have gotten in, because Steve was silent. He blinked as his brain chewed on what Bucky said, and Bucky hoped, prayed, begged the universe that he had said the right thing, that he hadn’t fucked up.

Steve reached out and took Bucky’s cast in his hand. Bucky let him hold it, though he still felt delicate. Steve’s thumbs rubbed against the hard, porous material.

“You were always stickin’ up for me,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said. “The world doesn’t have any business beating up on you as bad as it has.”

“Thank you. For bein’ here.”

“I’ve always got your back,” Bucky swore.


	10. Chapter 10

Early morning dew clung to the parked cars. Steve was still sipping at his cup of coffee, brought from the hotel. The smell of French roast and sweet pastries hung in the air. It was slowly waking Bucky up. Slowly.

Bucky checked the clock. Nearly five a.m.. The sort of time these high-powered A-type people normally wake up, or begin to head out the door. The lights weren’t on yet and there was no evidence that Pierce was even home. Someone like him, with a private jet and flush with money, could be anywhere in the world.

“What’s the point of living in a house like that?” Steve said, peering at the townhouse past the rim of his plain baseball cap. “You can see everything.”

“I think that’s the point,” Bucky said. “Nothing to hide, everything to show off.”

Pierce’s townhouse was modern, but cut into an old brick townhouse. The front of the building was part glass. Art pieces and ten-thousand dollar chairs could be seen from the street, confidently safe from burglars in a fortress Bucky wasn’t even going to begin to try and get through.

Its transparency had its uses. Five a.m., and the lights were coming on automatically. Bucky shifted in his seat as the subtle, golden lighting lit up the living room. He reached down and grabbed his camera, pulling a telephoto lens out of his camera bag and screwing it to the front.

It was better than binoculars. Alexander Pierce stood at the precipice of his window in an expensive robe and pajamas with a cup of what was likely very fine coffee. He briefly saw his housekeeper pass behind him, ask a question, and walk away with her answer. She smiled, even this early in the morning. He wondered what kind of boss Pierce was if a housekeeper seemed that content and confident.

Out of instinct, Bucky took a photo of him with his housekeeper. He lowered the camera and sat back.

“I’m glad I never met him at HYDRA,” Steve said.

“Why?” Bucky asked.

Steve shrugged. “When someone has that much money and power, they can basically get away with anything. Whatever they want. I wouldn’t want to be around that.”

A chill went up Bucky’s spine. The night before came crashing back, the weight of Steve’s confession. It made a terrifying amount of sense.

Pierce began to move back into the building. Bucky unscrewed the lens and put it back into his bag. He fixed a long lens onto it and handed it to Steve.

“You wanna do the honors?” Bucky asked.

Steve held the camera in his hands like a reverent thing. Bucky showed him how to use it in a crash course in spy photography.

A half an hour later, the garage at the front of the building opened and Pierce’s car drove out—a silver Bentley Flying Spur. Even being unable to see through tinted windows, he would bet his kidneys that Pierce had a driver.

Steve took a rapid series of photographs as Bucky pulled out of his spot. He began to follow Pierce at a safe distance, matching his speed but giving him five car lengths of space.

They eased into early-morning Manhattan traffic, but they seemed to be moving out of the city. The Triskelion headquarters were in the Financial District, but they weren’t moving that direction. They found themselves on route to LaGuardia, and Bucky hoped to hell that Pierce wasn’t getting on a plane. He wasn’t even sure Pierce kept his jet there. He kicked himself for not doing the research.

The car moved closer to the Bronx. Not the airport after all, but they were in the neighborhoods around it. He didn’t know the neighborhood that he found himself in, but the Bentley began to slow in front of a gated lot.

Bucky broke and turned onto a side street, parking as fast and as discreetly as humanly possible.

“Come on,” Bucky said. “Bring the camera.”

Steve jumped and got out of the car, following behind as Bucky slunk around the corner. They peeked out from the rear of an old Dodge Durango. Someone opened the gate for the Bentley. With its gleaming body and expensive detailing, the Bentley was mismatched to the industrial, gravel setting. A man closed the gate behind the car. Bucky narrowed his eyes at the “no trespassing” sign.

“Do you think we can get in without being seen?” Steve asked.

“Let’s find out,” Bucky said.

The car parked toward an old, abandoned building with mesh and bars over the windows. The factory was old, with a wraparound covered walkway where trucks could load and unload. Bucky weaved around the edge of the lot, Steve close behind him.

Just as Bucky was regretting that he didn’t keep boltcutters in his car, he saw the fence curling outwards a few yards away. The luck was so good that he distrusted it.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take advantage of it.

“Come on,” Bucky whispered.

They ducked through the break in the fence, hugging the building as they moved closer to Pierce and his one-man entourage. Pierce’s driver was a tough-looking guy, more likely than not ex-military, with a scar on his jaw and a black uniform more inspired by special forces than a man named Jeeves.

Bucky put his hand out and Steve handed him back his camera. Bucky zoomed in and saw a man come down the platform. He was tall, wearing glasses—no, not glasses. Of all things, it was a monocle. He wore a tightly tailored military-inspired suit and black combat boots. It was all a little _neo-nazi_ for Bucky’s taste, but maybe that was just him having watched Indiana Jones a few too many times as a kid.

“What are they saying?” Steve whispered.

“I can’t tell,” Bucky said. “Never did learn to read lips.”

“Hey… can I see your phone?”

Bucky handed it to him, distracted. He peered through the lens of his camera and zoomed in, snapping a few pictures. It was then that he saw Steve dart off across the way, toward the abandoned building. His heart leapt into his throat. Eyes wide, frozen to the spot, he could only stare as Steve crawled under the wraparound porch.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky mouthed as soon as Steve looked back at him.

Steve gave the universal symbol for “one second” and crawled toward the meeting.

Crouching down, Bucky shifted on the balls of his feet. He wanted to run after Steve, but the fact remained that Bucky was at greater risk of being seen. Sure, Steve wasn’t _that_ small, but he had a lifetime of getting in and out of tight places, running from the relentless bullies of his youth and in his on-the-run life beyond.

It might be that Steve knew what he was doing.

Steve hugged the ground, putting the phone out as far as he could. Bucky hoped it could record as much as possible from where Steve was crouching. He couldn’t afford to get any closer.

Eventually, the meeting came to an end. The players parted, and from the atmosphere and their expressions, Bucky didn’t think they were parting on the best of terms. Something about Pierce’s manner said he was loathe to turn his back on the man with the monocle. The man in turn wanted to be out of Pierce’s sight as soon as possible.

Steve locked eyes with Bucky. Glaring, he sharply gestured for Steve to come back. Steve nodded and began to crawl back, but then froze. The man with the monocle was moving closer to him, not going back the way he had come. Steve wheeled back and hugged the wall, his large eyes watching as the man wheeled on a random crony and gave an angry command.

Bucky was frozen. He couldn’t move from his spot without risking being seen. If Steve moved at all, the man would notice him. The only option was for both of them to wait. Steve was so still that he didn’t even look back at Bucky, who was almost physically willing him to look back over.

There was no scenario that didn’t end with them caught. If they grabbed Steve, Bucky would have no recourse. He’d come up with his gun and, if he were lucky, found that they valued nonconfrontational scenarios and they could get away. But they outnumbered Bucky, they had guns, and they would get the drop on him. They would take Steve, and when they figured out who he was he’d be back in a lab, prodded and dissected. And after that, god knows what manner of other things.

Tension built in his legs as Steve finally locked eyes with him. Steve shook his head, eyes full of fear, but devoid of panic. As much as he wanted to act, despite how painful it was to keep still, he forced himself to settle. The moment hung in the air like an axe before the downswing.

The man in the monocle snapped at the man in his employ and gestured for them to leave. As they marched off back to their own vehicles, Steve collapsed back against the wall, his chest rising and falling. He slunk down and ran, body close to the ground, skidding to a stop when he finally got back to Bucky.

“What the hell were you doing?” Bucky whispered.

Bucky took the sides of Steve’s face in a delicate grasp that Steve relaxed into. Steve took both hands in his and lowered them, looking earnestly at Bucky’s face.

“I’ve got something,” Steve said.

“You could have been caught,” Bucky admonished.

“Trust me. We needed to know what they were talking about.”

“You say ‘we’ like I was in on the plan.”

“You’re going to want to hear what’s on your phone.”

“It damn well better be worth it. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

#

With the Bentley and the rest of the vehicles gone, it was safe to go back to Bucky’s Golf. Bucky connected the phone’s audio to the bluetooth in the car. They both sat in the seats, settling down to listen. Bucky pulled up the file and pressed play, a notebook open in his lap. The audio was low and covered with the sound of wind interference. Without experience, Bucky would lose a lot of words. But surveillance was part of the job, both as a cop and as a PI. He began to write what he heard in quick, neat shorthand.

**Pierce:** Delays aren’t acceptable any longer, Strucker. You do know why, don’t you?

**Strucker:** I can hazard a guess.

Bucky noted a German accent.

**Pierce:** The timetable has changed. It’s only a matter of time before they tie us to whoever hired the hitman.

**Strucker:** So, we’re to suddenly become reckless because of one man’s paranoid mistake?

**Pierce:** He was right. Erskine had been the leak. He just hired the wrong man for the job.

**Strucker:** He committed murder behind your back. It’s not worth releasing our agent without the serum perfected.

**Pierce:** Then perfect it.

_Agent_? Bucky thought. He made a note of the word, underlining and placing a question mark beside the shorthand.

An angry pause as Strucker took time to gather himself.

**Strucker:** I don’t know how long you expect these subjects to last if you push them.

**Pierce:** Sacrifices have to be made. You’ve known that since the beginning.

**Strucker:** I have been part of this as long as you. I have dedicated my life to it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice. No life I wouldn’t take.

**Pierce:** Then act like it. Deliver the serums to me by the end of the week.

**Strucker:** Without Erskine’s true formula, the antidote—

**Pierce:** Our contact inside the police department failed to find anything in his apartment. You’re going to have to fill in the blanks.

The hair on the back of Bucky’s neck stood up. He underlined “police department.” He thought of the man Sam had described as a “shitheel,” wondered about all those holes in the investigation.

**Strucker:** If we should fail—if you should be impatient now—you undo centuries of patient planning.

**Pierce:** Centuries, leading to now. Now is what I care about. The threat is imminent and we finally have the world where we want it. Compare it to the past all you want. The century I’m concerned with is ours. By the time I check in with you again, you had better be ready. Because the world is primed. You know how quickly things can change. How fast empires can fall. As much as we’d like it to be different, we can’t predict politicians and we can’t predict the market. We act now, or else you might find yourself waiting a few more centuries.

The recording came to an end. Bucky sped-read his shorthand a few more times, making every part of the conversation sink into his memory.

“Agent.” That word popped out at him every time he looked it over. If there was someone they were getting ready to unleash, or someone planted in some position of power, Bucky needed to find out who it was. Until then, the question remained:

“What are they up to?” Bucky said.

“They talked about an antidote,” Steve said. “An antidote for what?”

Thinking, Bucky settled back, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He detected a problem that could only be solved by positing things out loud, and seeing what stuck.

“They were testing you with different serums,” Bucky said.

“Couldn’t be sure how many,” Steve said. “I wasn’t in on the changes, except when I noticed my symptoms changing.”

“Stick with me here. Are you sure it was the serums that made you sick?”

“What else—I mean, I always assumed—”

“It doesn’t necessarily follow that getting sick was the result of the serums. What if they were getting you sick to test something. An antidote. You said at one point they cured you of just about everything.”

“They did. Even the asthma. Then they started in with the serums. I have all kinds of symptoms now. The anemia, the arrhythmia, the shitty immune system. It’s all stuff I hadn’t had before.”

“Did they ever give you anything other than the serums?”

“No. I mean—we were hooked up to IVs part of the time. Fluids and stuff. To keep us alive, I figured.”

“You figured. The doctors never spoke to you. Maybe it was an extreme case of blind testing. Something to make you sick in the fluids, something to test an antidote in the serums.”

Steve paled, realization sweeping through him. Bucky tried to imagine the cringe he must have suppressed, knowing he hadn’t been aware of something else—a potentially poisonous volley of diseases injected into his body without his consent or knowledge.

“They get you to a baseline,” Bucky posited. “They control how you deteriorate. And then they test the serums. The cure. The antidote. Just not one they’ve figured out yet.”

“But I was healthy,” Steve argued. “For just a second, they cured me.”

“They cured _chronic conditions_. That might not have been what they were looking to do.”

Steve’s face turned blank. Then he shivered. He opened the door and got out of the car. Alarmed, Bucky put down his phone and notebook, grabbed his keys and got out of the car, too. Steve was walking away, his hands out by his sides.

“No,” Steve said as Bucky came near.

“Calm down,” Bucky said, voice soft and careful.

“What if I’m contagious? What if it spreads?”

“We don’t even know if you have something.”

“You said—”

“I’m not a doctor. This is just an idea. I’m spitballing.”

“It makes sense.”

“But we don’t _know_.”

Shaking his hands like they had water on them, Steve’s face turned to disgust.

“I’m so tired of this,” Steve said. “I’m tired of not knowing why I was a guinea pig. I’m tired of not knowing why I’m sick. I could be _diseased_. I’ve _slept with people_ , Bucky. What if I—”

“Stop,” Bucky said. “You were around Erskine for a year. Did he get sick?”

“No.”

“Have any of your partners died? What about the other kids you spent all that time with, the ones you escaped with. Are they sick?”

“Not… not that I know of.”

“I think you’re fine, Steve. Maybe you need to sit down again.”

Steve began to pace in earnest. Bucky sighed heavy through his nose. He walked up and grabbed him gently by the wrist. Stopping abruptly, Steve looked at the hand that held him and back at Bucky. In turn, Bucky smoothed his thumb over Steve’s wrist.

“We’ll figure this all out,” Bucky said. “I swear we will. But we don’t get there by panicking.”

All at once, Steve seemed to shed some of his nerves, his shoulders falling, but not totally relaxing. His arms unfurled and Steve allowed himself to be pulled close.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Steve said. “What’s something as sick as HYDRA doing ridding the world of diseases?”

“ _We’ll figure this all out_ ,” Bucky repeated. “That’s my _job_. It’s what you asked me to do.”

Bucky leaned in and kissed Steve on the cheek, quick and chaste. Steve relaxed all the more and he lowered his hand, Bucky letting go of his wrist.

“He said there’s someone in the police department,” Steve said, trying to think about something else. “You think that’s the agent?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “They could be planted anywhere. It’s just another volley of enemies. We’ve gotta watch our backs.”

“We can’t stay in a hotel forever.”

“No. No, we can’t.”

“I’m sorry I ran off with your phone. You wouldn’t have let me do that if you’d known what I wanted to do.”

“Damn right, I wouldn’t.”

“I’d do it again.”

“I know. Which is why you and I are going somewhere else today.”

“What do you mean?”

Bucky stared at Steve, and met that curiosity with a steely resolution.


	11. Chapter 11

_“Mom!” Bucky cried._

_Winnie Barnes walked into the administrative lobby, spotting her son on the small, child-sized chairs immediately. Bucky grinned and she spotted the missing canine immediately, inhaling in a worried breath._

_Bucky jumped off the chair and ran up to his mother. He grabbed her skirt and looked up into her face._

_“Mom, can I have a friend over?” Bucky asked._

_“Sweetie, your face,” Winnie said. “What happened? Your teacher said you got into a fight. I thought we agreed we wouldn’t be doing that anymore.”_

_“But mom, I really want Steve to come over.”_

_“Who’s Steve?”_

_“He’s really cool. There were these guys picking on this girl and he was fighting, like, all three of them ‘cos of it. All by himself! Oh, he’s in with Mr. Collins. We go in next. I think you have to sign something.”_

_“Why did you fight, though?”_

_“Steve was on the ground and Robbie Nelson gave him a bloody nose, so I punched Robbie. We hung out in the nurse’s office, ‘cause I lost a tooth, see? Don’t worry, it’s a baby one. Steve’s mom said he could come over.”_

_“Oh, my god,” Winnie whispered, pinching the bridge of her nose._

_An hour later, Steve was standing behind the door of Bucky’s apartment with his mother, Sarah. Steve’s face broke into a smile when he saw Bucky, despite the bruise forming under his eye and a swollen nose. Bucky grabbed Steve by the hand and they ran into the house and into Bucky’s room. Bucky wasn’t sure what their moms ever talked about, but he was sure it was probably the boring stuff that his mom was always talking to her friends about on the phone._

_“I really appreciate this,” Sarah said. “Steve doesn’t have very many friends—”_

_When they went into Bucky’s room, Steve looked around, taking in all the details—his posters and books, his science project half-finished on a desk._

_Steve gasped as he saw what was in the corner. “You have a TV in your room?”_

_“Yeah,” Bucky said. “It’s not a big deal. I get like, three stations. I get the cartoons on Saturday, though, that’s awesome.”_

_“Can I come over Saturday?”_

_“If you want.”_

_“Cool.”_

_“How’s your nose?”_

_“Aw, it’s alright. It stopped bleeding a little bit ago. I think for good, now. I get nosebleeds a lot. I’m used to it.”_

_“Do you get in a lot of fights?”_

_“Kinda. That’s not why I get nosebleeds, though. The doctors can’t figure it out, but it’s okay.”_

_“But you weren’t even scared of Robbie and people think he’s in the fourth grade.”_

_Steve shrugged, but then rubbed his arm and couldn’t look at Bucky._

_“I just don’t like bullies,” Steve said. “They want me to hide and run away. But if you do that you just get hit anyway. So, I just—”_

_Steve let the sentence trail. Bucky wanted to say how cool that was, but he wanted to be cool, too, so he didn’t._

_“You just moved here, right?” Steve asked, breaking the silence._

_“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Iowa’s a lot different. It’s pretty loud here.”_

_“You’ll get used to it. I don’t notice. Why’d you move?”_

_“Oh. Um—my dad died.”_

_“Oh. I’m sorry.”_

_Bucky shrugged. That feeling fell over him, the one the counselor called ‘grief,’ but he didn’t want to feel it right when he’d made a friend._

_“You know,” Steve said. “My dad died, too. But it was before I was born. He was in the army.”_

_“What? Mine, too. Mom says me and Becca were army brats. We’ve been all over, ‘til dad died. But mom says we’ll be here for a while.”_

_“Oh, good! I mean… that you’ll be here for a while. It’s fun hanging out with you.”_

_Bucky smiled, somewhat toothless. It all mixed up inside him. He didn’t talk about his dad and he wondered, with some hope, that Steve might listen about the way it twisted him up inside. He didn’t like the therapist. He was a grown-up and didn’t get things. Steve could teach him about not having a dad. Bucky thought it was a little unfair to just ask Steve without giving him something, too. Then his eyes flashed. He realized what he could do._

_“Hey, Steve?” Bucky asked._

_“Yeah?”_

_“You said you get in fights a lot.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Me, too. Here, my dad showed me a few things. Lemme show you how to really throw a punch.”_

#

Steve held the gun up straight, just like Bucky showed him. He stared down the sights at the target across the range, one eye closed.

“No,” Bucky said. “Stop thinking about the movies. Eyes open. And legs a little further apart.”

Steve adjusted, breathing in and out.

“Okay,” Steve said. “I’m ready.”

“Earmuffs.”

Steve placed the green, sound-proof earmuffs over his ears. Steve was ridiculous, but then again, they looked ridiculous on everybody. Bucky followed suit. He stood just behind Steve. The recoil on the 9mm glock couldn’t be that bad, but it was the first shot he was ever going to take. Anything could happen.

Steve exhaled. Put his finger on the trigger. Applied gentle pressure.

Steve wasn’t blown back, but he stumbled backwards a pace. Bucky caught him with a hand on the small of his back.

Steve was more surprised than knocked back. His eyes were wide and he wondered at the thing in his hands, as if it had just appeared out of thin air, firing itself. It was a kind of wonder, but also reverence.

“Woah,” Steve said, the word muffled through Bucky’s earmuffs.

Bucky pulled off his earmuffs and Steve did the same.

“Well,” Bucky said, peering across the way. “You hit him in the shoulder. Not too bad, for the first try.”

“Lemme go again,” Steve asked, slipping the earmuffs back on.

“You got it, buddy. Just try scooting your front foot a little more—yeah, like that.”

Steve let off another few rounds, trying to group them at Bucky’s instruction. By the time the magazine was spent, Steve was almost shaking and he put the gun down on the counter in front of him. Bucky pushed the button and the silhouette moved toward them and came to a stop.

“Not bad,” Bucky said.

“Really?” Steve asked.

Bucky pulled the paper sheet down and pointed to the holes. “You got some in the ribcage, a few shoulder hits, and one in the hip. Not the center target, but you didn’t miss the silhouette too many times. I mean, if you have to shoot someone, they probably won’t be standing still like this, but it’s a start. And any of these wounds would have stopped someone.”

“I’m gonna do better next time.”

“I believe you. How did it feel?”

“ _Powerful_. I can’t really describe it. Do you ever get used to it?”

“Honestly? No. But I only ever fired a gun once, as a cop. Haven’t fired outside a range since the army. But you adjust to the power. You’ll pick it up after a few more tries.”

“You don’t really think I’m going to have to shoot anybody?”

“No. And you don’t get a gun. I just—I think you should know how to shoot, is all.”

Steve let out a ragged breath through his nose. He checked his hand quick, seeing a little bit of a tremor in it.

“I’ll get steady,” Steve promised.

“You’ll get there,” Bucky said with a nod.

He pulled up another sheet and replaced it in the device. Bucky pushed a button and it wheeled back several yards. Steve’s hand was steadier when he put himself in the weaver stance, like he’d shown him. Bucky was more of an isosceles guy, but with Steve’s frame and energy, he’d adopted weaver easily.

When Steve was done firing another round, Bucky peered out, sure his eyes were deceiving him. He pushed the button to bring the silhouette back. There was a cluster of bullets closer to the chest, and closer to each other.

Steve was a fast learner.

There was a sound from behind him. Something moved in his periphery. He turned and saw Sam behind the bulletproof glass in the observation lobby. Sharon was behind him and gave a small nod. Sam waved him in. Bucky gave a thumbs-up and tapped Steve on the shoulder.

In the back corner of the gun club rec room, they had enough privacy for Sam and Sharon to tell them what had happened.

“We have nearly everybody,” Sharon said. “Rumlow left quite a trail behind him when he went on his spree.”

“Did you catch him??” Bucky asked.

“Nah,” Sam said. “The guy’s still at large. But we’ve been to his apartment. Our tech expert got into his computer. He was in the dark web for hire and I guess he figured nobody would ever be able to get into his computer, because everything was still open on his laptop. He accidentally gave us a connection to his forum. We’re about to make a huge sweep of illegal firearms, hitmen, and human trafficking as a byproduct of our little murder case. So, my day’s been pretty great.”

“Holy cow. That’s gonna be one hell of a bust.”

“And it means we can’t wait any longer,” Sharon said. “We have a chance for one of the biggest RICO cases in New York history. As in the state. No district attorney is ever going to forgive us for delaying. So, we’ve got a few pictures for you to look at.”

“Pictures?” Steve asked.

“We’ve got to know if any of these potential clients of Rumlow’s are anybody you know, Steve.”

Sharon laid down a series of photos. Not all of them were mugshots, which meant not all of the clients were in the system. Made sense to Bucky, considering the nature of the crimes. Outside of organized crime, the most likely people to hire a hitman were everyday people who never got their hands dirty and didn’t mean to start just because they wanted someone dead.

“Any of these people—?” Sharon began

“Him,” Steve said, pointing directly at a photo.

Steve had come alive as soon as he saw it. It was so sudden that Sam and Sharon reeled back. It wasn’t often that someone spotted anyone out of a lineup of faces without even a little bit of hemming and hawing over the minutiae, or slowed down by their own uncertainty.

“You sure?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know his name,” Steve said. “But he was one of the doctors that worked in the Red Room. I think he was pretty important. He was there from the beginning. And you think he hired Rumlow?”

Bucky leaned forward. The man in the picture had a little, pointed nose, a crunched face, and wore glasses that were out of style by a few decades. His head was kind of big, which he was trying to hide under an expensive hat. The photo wasn’t a dead-on mugshot. The film grain was familiar. It was taken by a long telephoto lens, the kind Bucky was used to working with by that point.

“His name is Zola,” Sharon said. “Arnim Zola. Swiss. He’s here on a work visa, but he’s working on citizenship.”

“Sounds like a flight risk,” Bucky said.

“Risky to arrest him without concrete proof,” Sam said. “If a judge doesn’t consider him a risk and he makes bail, or we can’t hold him, it might be off to Switzerland. Then we have an extradition problem. Those guys sometimes don’t feel like playing ball, even with a treaty.”

“So how are you going to do this?” Bucky asked.

“Well, we were hoping you guys had something by now.”

“We’ve got plenty. The problem is, we don’t know what any of it means yet. And I haven’t even heard of Zola until now.”

“Well, you probably guessed that Zola works for Triskelion. He’s their senior biomedical engineer, whatever that means.”

Sharon and Bucky shared a look. They both knew Sam knew exactly what it meant and was being annoyingly self-deprecating.

“It means,” Sharon said, giving Sam the side-eye. “That he’s in charge of the major projects Triskelion is cooking up. The question is: which projects? They’re into GMOs, biofuel, medical engineering—anything with a strand of DNA that can be modified. It’s a lot. Could be anything.”

“We’re getting close,” Bucky said. “We have some ideas, but nothing solid, yet.”

“What holes do you need to fill in?” Sam asked.

“Let me give you some of what we have,” Bucky said. “You’ll be really interested in the audio we just caught. Whatever they’re planning, it’s big. I typed up my report this morning. You’re going to want to take time to really absorb it.”

Bucky reached down into the briefcase he had brought to the range. There was a binder with a neat report inside, professional down to the cover and colored tabs.

“I’ll let you know if it helps,” Sam said. “In the meantime, Zola can’t know our real target is Triskelion. He needs to think we only suspect him of the hit, and make him think he’s gonna get away with it. But it depends.”

“On what?” Steve asked.

“On whether he’s the self-serving type or a true believer,” Sam finished.

Sharon gave a small, confident nod. “Let me handle it.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said.

“She’s good,” Sam said.

“I’m pretty good,” she confirmed.

Bucky nodded, then raised a brow. “Can I watch?”

There were low levels of smiles all around.

“Down, boy,” Sam said.

“All right,” Bucky said. “Sam, go get your RICO case. We’ll speed up on our end. We have a few loose ends to tie up.”

“A few?” Steve said.

“I’m—trying to be confident,” Bucky said out of the corner of his mouth.

He shared a smile with Steve. They locked eyes and for just a moment Bucky was lost in those baby blues, thrilled a little by the wickedness in his mocking smirk.

Sam clapped Bucky on the shoulder and nodded. “Barnes, lemme talk with you alone for a second.”

The room went still. Sharon, Steve, and Bucky all looked at each other in turn. Bucky shrugged and nodded his head.

“Sure, man,” Bucky said.

He slid out of the room with Sam. He briefly heard Sharon beginning to talk about shooting with Steve—he hoped he’d pick up a few things. There weren’t many better shots in the world than Sharon.

“So, whats—?” Bucky began as they found themselves alone in the hall.

Sam punched him hard on the upper arm, the left one, the one that was still sore from a forearm fracture. Bucky’s mouth went into a wide, wordless ‘o’ and he glared back at Sam.

“You’re on the fucking clock, Wilson,” Bucky said. “This is assault.”

“ _You slept with him_ ,” Sam admonished in a mockery of a whisper.

Grabbing his oncoming bruise, Bucky faked indignation. “How do you know who I’ve slept with?”

“You just look at everybody that way, do you?”

“Steve is my oldest friend. We have a rapport.”

“A ‘rapport?’ Is that what they’re calling it these days? Look, I don’t usually care how you get your dick wet, but if this interferes with the deep conspiracy shit we’re dealing with here—”

“I’m not an idiot, Sam. I wouldn’t jeopardize this investigation.”

“I’m sure you don’t think you have.”

“What is your problem, man?”

Sam’s face was stern, another volley about to come out of his mouth. Something settled and Sam softened. He crossed his arms across his chest and locked eyes with Bucky from under his brows.

“I think the kid is delicate,” Sam said. “I think you don’t see it. Maybe it’s the way you remember him. I don’t know what he was like. But right now? His outline is _vibrating_.”

“What does that mean?”

“You really don’t see it?”

“I honest-to-god don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, I think the guy wants to scream and he won’t let himself. I think it means he was tortured for years and he’s way too chill. I think it means there’s a lot he’s not telling us about what he went through.”

 _You have no idea_ , Bucky thought.

Bucky turned his head and checked the hallway, finding it still empty. He gathered his thoughts.

“It just sort of happened,” Bucky said.

“’Just sort of happened?’” Sam said. “What, you tripped and suddenly you were touching dicks?”

“He initiated it, okay? He’s in control. I didn’t take advantage of anybody. I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”

Sam nodded, some of his indignation dissipating. But his arms were still stubbornly crossed across his chest. “You care about him a lot, don’t you? Even after all these years.”

Bucky’s mouth and jaw set. He nodded, checking the hallway again, as if someone might be spying, judging.

“I do know he’s changed. I don’t know everything about him like I used to. But _I know him_. I can’t explain it.”

Sam sighed, his shoulders dropping. “Swear to me you know what you’re doing.”

It was then that Sharon and Steve came out into the hall. She pointed to the wall where there hung framed photographs and posters on stances and angles. Steve nodded as he listened, absorbing the sharp-shooter’s knowledge with rapt attention.

Everything fell away. The paneled walls, the flickering fluorescent light buzzing near his left ear, Sam’s stare. For a second the only thing in the world that existed was Steve Rogers in profile.

He turned back to Sam, who was eyeing him nervously.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Sam,” Bucky said. “But I know what’s important. I’ve got something here, and I’m not about to fuck it up.”

Sam and Sharon departed, ready to mobilize a sting that would be on the morning news, come the next day. A comfortable silence pooled around them in their corner of the rec room.

“You know,” Steve said. “After shooting that gun, I should really unwind.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said. “How?”

“I could think of a few things.”

#

It built and built until they were finally over the threshold of the hotel room door. The door clicked shut and Steve grabbed Bucky by the rim of his belt, tugging him with one aggressive jerk.

“My hands are still a little shaky,” Steve said.

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky said.

“That gun was a lot to handle. You wanna help me get steady?”

He slipped the tongue of Bucky’s belt loose with a snap. Bucky shrugged out of his jacket, struggling a little with the cast, then slipped out of his shoes. Steve followed suit, slipping off his socks.

“Maybe you should handle something a little more familiar?” Bucky suggested, cocking his head.

“Shut up,” Steve said.

Steve helped Bucky get his holster off and set it aside on the dresser before shedding his own coat and shirt. He worked at his own belt as he walked Bucky backwards to the bed. The back of Bucky’s legs hit the mattress and his knees buckled. He dropped onto the mattress, Steve insinuating himself between his knees.

“Can I ask you something?” Steve said, before pressing his mouth against Bucky’s. “Do you ever—are you ever—do you—”

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky said, unbuttoning and unzipping Steve’s pants. “Spit it out.”

“Can I fuck you?”

Silence. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner.

A thrill went through Bucky’s body, like someone had just given him a scalp massage. He studied Steve, looking him up and down, remembering the other night. Steve had been phenomenal, how he’d urged and surrendered.

“You top?” Bucky said in a whisper.

Steve seemed petrified, afraid he had said the wrong thing. Bucky let his gaze be deep and wanting. Suddenly, Steve could read him clearer. Steve’s brows relaxed up and his mouth was breathing through a little part in his lips.

Bucky pulled his shirt up, but where his arms crossed, he found himself caught. In his sudden hurry to be undressed and fuckable, he’d forgotten about his cast. He struggled and sighed, but then he heard a laugh. Gentle fingers pried the cotton shirt over his head and off his wrists. A little embarrassed, Bucky tried to compensate by falling back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Is that a yes?” Steve asked, like it was the setup to a joke they both knew the punchline to.

Bucky grinned and chucked his chin out like he was about to make a dare. Steve smiled out one side of his mouth, raising his brows and slightly ticking his head up.

“Alright,” Steve said, grabbing Bucky by the thighs, sliding his hands from knee to hip.

The weight of Steve on top of him and between his legs was steady and stubborn. He pressed his hip into Bucky’s. The kiss that followed was deep and warm, lips aligning and tongues darting to press together. Bucky could feel Steve get harder the more they kissed, and his own remaining clothing were becoming unbearable.

“Do you know what I’m gonna do to you, Bucky?” Steve whispered before nibbling on his lip.

“Don’t tell me you’re all talk,” Bucky teased, touching his teeth with his tongue as he smiled.

Steve huffed, a little, frustrated noise. Then he went away. He knew why. Steve came back with a condom and lube in his hand. He’d packed for their hotel stay with everything in mind.

Steve leaned over him, kissing him, before nibbling at his ear. The sensation of teeth on his lobe made his leg hitch.

“Turn over,” Steve said, mouth pressed to his ear.

Steve had always had a deep voice, and it rumbled through him at the command. Bucky’s eyes rolled at how hot it was and he bit his lip. He was just glad Steve hadn’t seen it.

He flipped over. Steve got his claws around his waistband and pulled Bucky’s pants and underwear off in one long, sweeping motion. He gasped and jerked at the feel of teeth on his shoulder—not sharp, but hard. Steve explored Bucky’s back with kisses and nibbles until finally he was biting the muscle of his hip.

“Don’t,” Bucky mumbled.

“What?” Steve said. “I can stop. Do you want me to stop?”

“I’m trying to tell you to _speed up_.”

There was a pause.

Steve grabbed a pillow and shoved it under Bucky’s hip, shifting his rear just where he wanted it. Bucky bit his lip and pressed his forehead into the mattress.

“Tell me you want it,” Steve said.

“ _Fuck me_ ,” Bucky growled.

“Want you so bad, Buck.”

“Then act like it, ya bastard.”

He could hear the wicked smile in Steve’s laugh. “You big guys are always so bossy.”

Before Bucky could get another jab in, there was the first, gentle pressure of Steve pressing into his body. He concentrated on relaxing. He felt Steve take a grip on the muscle of his ass as he pressed in. Bucky tensed and then relaxed into it.

“Oh, wow, Buck,” Steve said. “Oh wow, you feel so good.”

Bucky wanted to say something in kind, but he just grunted and panted. Because Steve felt good. He felt _really_ good. He didn’t think Steve would feel as wide or as deep as he did by the way that he looked. Yet as Steve fucked him it was only feeling better and better.

“What’s that?” Steve said, after Bucky made a mumbling sound into the mattress.

“No, don’t stop,” Bucky said at the interruption of rhythm.

“Not until you say that again.”

“Come _on_.”

“What’d you say?”

“ _Steve_.”

“If this is too much— “

“No, don’t stop.”

“What’d you say, Buck?”

“I said your dick is perfect, Steve. Oh my god.”

Bucky felt himself going hot for all the wrong reasons. He’d broken the mood, he was sure of it.

And then Steve had his fist in Bucky’s hair. He didn’t pull hard, just steering Bucky where he wanted him.

“You know what else I like about big guys?” Steve asked.

Bucky moaned through a haze of sensation.

“You guys can take a lot,” Steve finished.

Steve pulled out and flipped Bucky over, pulling his hips to the edge of the bed. Bucky spread his legs and Steve pushed into him again, grabbing his thighs to steady himself.

Steve’s hands roamed over Bucky’s torso. Bucky could only lay his head back, close his eyes and reached down to pull Steve closer, hands wrapped around his ribcage. Bucky lost a sense of time. There were just Steve’s hands and his cock, filling him with sensation. He’d looked for this in so many boyfriends, casual flings, and one-night stands and he never thought—

“Steve,” Bucky said.

“Hold on,” Steve said. “I’m just—”

The rhythm was slowing down. Steve’s grip on his thighs was more desperate than before. When Bucky looked up he saw that Steve’s hair was trembling and he was panting, flushed deep pink. Steve didn’t look like he was finished. He looked—

“You can slow down,” Bucky said. “I won’t mind.”

“I’m not tired,” Steve lied.

Bucky spread his legs wider and leaned up, grabbing Steve by the back of his neck. He pulled him forward, bending his body in the middle so they were fucking face-to-face.

Steve didn’t seem to want to face him. He was buckling, head down, trying just to work on his thrusts. Bucky grasped him by the cheeks. Steve locked eyes with him. There was fear there, uncertainty.

“Go slow,” Bucky said. “Go slow.”

Steve still felt amazing slow. But he was avoiding eye contact. Bucky tilted Steve’s head a little until Steve finally locked onto him.

“You’re perfect,” Bucky said. “You’re just—oh god, like that, yes.”

Bucky held Steve’s eyes as long as he could, knowing his face was changing, evolving, the closer he came to an orgasm. Steve’s doubt finally moved away, into wonderment and an intensity so hot Bucky felt it in his bones.

Bucky’s eyes clamped shut and he shouted as he came, hands grabbing the back of Steve’s neck, perhaps a little too hard. His body jerked, spasming and then he was limp on the bed.

“Jesus Christ, Buck,” Steve said. “Give a guy some warning or something.”

For once it felt good to have someone keep fucking him after he’d come. He rode out the sensations as Steve brought himself to orgasm, making the most amazing, high sound. Bucky whimpered as Steve pulled out. Normally he would be embarrassed to be so vocal, but he was still riding the afterglow and didn’t give a damn. Steve collapsed next to him, pressing in close. Bucky threw his arm, cast and all, over Steve’s body and held him close.

There was a wave of silence.

“How’d you learn to fuck like that?” Bucky asked.

Steve laughed and turned his head, having the nerve to be coy. He picked at his fingers a little as he thought, before coming back to himself.

“Can I tell you something?” Steve said.

“Anything,” Bucky replied.

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Oh, then you _have_ to tell me.”

Steve laughed, playing again at being shy and coy, but the man was transparent.

“I’ve never said this out loud,” Steve said. “It sounds too stupid.”

“You can tell me something stupid.”

“Shut up. I just—that first time I had sex, it was like—it’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Bucky said with a grin.

“I like sex. I want it to be good, I want to feel good.”

“That felt good, Steve.”

“It did. Look, whatever this is—this thing that we have—I’ve been looking for something like it. A ‘come as you are’ thing. But I don’t think I could have been here with you, like this, without all that _figuring out_ that I did. You should know that about me.”

Bucky reached out and grasped Steve gently around the crown of his head and pulled him in. He kissed him on the forehead. Steve’s smile was small, but it collapsed quickly, like he was afraid of it.

“If you’re worried I’m gonna judge you,” Bucky said. “I won’t. Can I tell you something, too?”

“Anything,” Steve echoed.

“Your cock is perfect.”

“ _Bucky_!”

Even wrapped up in a laugh, he sounded like his mom, admonishing him for swearing. Bucky buried his face in the hollow of Steve’s neck. He travelled the length of it in trails of kisses, working his way up to the jaw. But not without sharing a few words.

“God sculpted that cock for my ass, I swear,” Bucky said.

“Shut up,” Steve begged, his voice husky.

“I mean it. I’m going to erect a temple to your dick.”

Steve’s hand began to trail down Bucky’s body. He grinned into Steve’s kisses. Steve took a hold of the muscle of Bucky’s ass, fingers intimately far into the cheeks.

“You’re gonna make me ready to go again in no time,” Steve said.

“I can think of worse things,” Bucky said through a grin.

Bucky wrapped both arms around Steve, clumsily positioning his cast as not to scratch Steve’s naked skin. His hand roamed the uneven landscape of his back. Steve shivered at the touch. It was getting cool. They got under the covers, uncaring about the mess they’d made on the sheets. Bucky inhaled the scent of sex and sweat mingling with hotel sheets.

Steve’s eyes were beautiful as they cast down. He seemed deep in thought, but content. In that moment, Bucky wanted every part of Steve. He wanted to gaze at him, to touch him, to hear him, to fill his senses with Steve. There was something to it all, beyond the fucking. At the thought of going without it, he felt himself withering, his heart sick from something rooted deep. Yet he could not quite find the name for the twisting feeling inside his chest.

 


	12. Chapter 12

_Steve’s fist was pressed into his cheek as he waited. Bucky slumped in the chair next to him, trying to read the magazine but not getting into any of the articles. As a fifteen year-old, he didn’t care much about celebrity couples, or the economy, or the news, so his options were limited in the emergency waiting room._

_Steve groaned and curled up a bit. Bucky sat up, looking over to him._

_“Hey,” Bucky said. “Is it getting worse? Do you want me to get the nurse?”_

_“It’s fine,” Steve said._

_Bucky knew it was a lie. Steve couldn’t be okay. They were in the ER. The sleepover had been cut short when the stomach pain set in, but Bucky hadn’t wanted to go home. He got dressed and told Sarah Rogers that he’d sit up with him until he got to see a doctor. There was a strange relief in her eyes, even as she fought him, trying to get him to call his mother and go home. In the end, she caved, though it didn’t take much._

_Mrs. Rogers sat at the kiosk, worried head cradled in her own hand as she tried to stay awake and listen to the person that was taking all of her insurance information. She had been a while._

_Why Steve couldn’t just go in and see a doctor was beyond Bucky’s understanding. It was unfair. It wasn’t right. Bucky wondered if he could ask what the problem was._

_Steve’s face pulled and he inhaled, sitting up in the chair as what had to be another wave of pain surged through him. Something hurt deep inside of Bucky, like someone crushing his stomach lining into a wad. He grabbed Steve by the shoulder and pressed his fingers in._

_“You okay?” Bucky asked, knowing that he wasn’t._

_Steve’s face was sour, but he nodded. He closed his eyes and Bucky could see little specks of water at the edges of his eyes. Then his face_ opened _like he was coming up from water and he breathed in. Something had gone and went, leaving Steve shaking and falling deeper into his chair._

_“I think it’s just gonna be a few more minutes,” Bucky said._

_Nodding, Steve didn’t have it in him to smile. He accepted whatever Bucky was going to say. He gasped again, a small hiss of air entering through his teeth and he cramped up again._

_Bucky turned his head and scanned the room. There were people there, but they were minding their own business. Bucky picked up his legs and put his feet at the edge of the chair. He moved his legs so that his knees were pointed toward Steve._

_“Here,” Bucky said, holding out his hand where it was hidden under his legs._

_Steve looked down at his offered hand, hidden in the space between them. He slipped his hand into Bucky’s. He could feel the sweat on Steve’s soft hands, but he didn’t mind it._

_“Squeeze how much it hurts,” Bucky said. “Just…don’t let anybody see, okay?”_

_Steve scanned around him too, pulling his own legs up so they were blocking the view of their hands clasped together._

_Steve squeezed._

_Tight._

#

Being kicked in the calf woke Bucky from a deep, content sleep. The first thing he would feel was annoyance, and he would kick himself for it later. Then there was the sensation of movement beside him. The room was dark—the light coming in behind the curtains was artificial, from the city, and not enough to light up the room. He reached up and clicked on the light by the bedside table.

Steve was thrashing. His pillow was soaked through with sweat and he was shaking. Bucky’s heart leapt into his throat.

He wanted to stop and shake Steve but then remembered what he should do. He’d given himself a nightmare refresher when Steve had confessed about his nightmares and was prepared to leave him be, unless he was like this—moving and panicked. The protocols all came back to him.

He took Steve by the shoulders and nudged him, but only gently. Not knowing if it would work, he started to talk.

“You’re having a bad dream,” Bucky said. “Steve. It’s just a dream. I promise, it’s going to be okay. Wake up. _Shh_. It’s okay. Wake up.”

Steve came around. He didn’t come back all at once, but opened his eyes and slowly realized he was in reality.

“Sit up,” Bucky said. “Feet on the floor.”

He helped Steve ground himself. Steve focused on his surroundings while Bucky rubbed his shoulders and helped him get calm.

“I was in that room again,” Steve said.

“No, you weren’t,” Bucky said. “You were just dreaming it.”

They breathed together for a minute. Bucky slyly put his hand over a pulse point, disguising it as a caress on the neck. Steve’s heart rate had gone down. His skin was still clammy, but it was cooling.

“Let’s lay back down,” Bucky said.

“I don’t know if I could sleep,” Steve protested.

Bucky looked over at the bright red of the hotel’s clock. Three in the morning. Steve needed more sleep than that. So did he.

“We gotta try,” Bucky said. “Lay down.”

Steve tried to stand up but Bucky pulled him back down with a gentle tug. Steve moaned protest but eventually gave up and laid back down. Bucky covered him back up with the comforter and rubbed his arms, trying to warm him up.

“I couldn’t move,” Steve said.

“You were moving plenty,” Bucky said with a laugh.

“I couldn’t—”

“We’re gonna talk about something else now, okay?”

“Like what?”

Bucky chewed on his lip as he thought. When he had the task of talking about anything but a particular subject, that subject seemed to be all that crops up. He searched and searched until he gave up to something so mundane it hurt to ask.

“What’s your favorite movie?” Bucky asked.

“Bucky,” Steve chastised. “This isn’t how you get to know someone.”

“Sure it is.”

“Why do you wanna know my favorite movie?”

“Why not?”

Steve seemed to be getting calmer as he mined his thoughts. Bucky could tell by the way he was eyeing the wall that he was thinking of anything but the nightmare.

“I dunno,” Steve said. “I like old movies. They’re romantic, somehow. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. You ever see the movie ‘Laura?’”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s about a detective who falls in love with the woman whose murder he’s solving.”

“Sounds intense.”

“Gene Tierney was so pretty.”

“Yeah? Who’s he?”

“She.”

“My bad.”

“I like girls, too.”

Bucky let the fact hang in the air as he considered it. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry if that’s a problem.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s just that a lot of people have a problem with it.”

“I don’t have a problem with it.”

No part of that was a lie, for Bucky. Steve shifted, as if that acceptance was unfamiliar and perhaps a little uncomfortable. He pressed his face further into the mattress, as if nearly surrendering to the idea of sleep.

“Gene Tierney, huh?” Bucky said. “I’ll have to google my competition.”

Steve laughed. “She died in the nineties.”

“Still. It sounds like a good movie. Let’s talk movies more over breakfast. You gettin’ sleepy yet?”

“I don’t know if I can sleep.”

“I bet you can. Here, let me turn off—“

“No. I don’t think I can handle it being dark right now.”

“It’ll make it harder to sleep.”

“Please?”

Bucky nodded. He pressed in closer to Steve and pulled the comforter over their shoulders. Steve laid on his side of the mattress, head pressed into a dry, fresh pillow. He closed his eyes, long lashes resting against his cheek. Bucky wanted to kiss his eyelids, then maybe his lips, but it was not the time.

_I was in that room again… I couldn’t move…_

He knew what Steve was dreaming about. He went hot again, his spine a river for heat, his skin prickling.

Bucky wished he didn’t have an imagination. He could picture it all, and a sick, acidy feeling stung and twisted in his stomach. He wondered if there was something wrong with him, that he could conjure the images so easily. It came with being a cop, and later a PI. He had to reconstruct. He had to reconstruct so he could understand. There was so little to understand. He didn’t want to know the man who had hurt Steve—just to find him. He was somewhere in Triskelion’s midst. He was _out there_.

There were a lot of ways he could get away with it.

He stopped that line of thought. Not the time.

Bucky snuggled in closer to Steve. He didn’t mind the clammy skin or being pinned uncomfortably. Steve hogged most of the pillows and comforter, but Bucky found himself willing to sacrifice his comfort. He watched Steve as his eyes became truly relaxed and he slowly fell back asleep. It was fitful and he seemed uncomfortable, like he was trying to wriggle out of the last dream he’d had. Minutes later, he was too limp to be faking. Bucky glanced at the alarm clock. Three-thirty a.m. Bucky settled down.

Steve had his left arm pinned and the skin under the cast was itchy. He could endure that, he decided, staring at Steve’s sleeping face. His brow was furrowed, as if angry, and Bucky supposed his dreams couldn’t be that much better. But it was still a step up from night terrors. It was better than thrashing and calling out. He’d have to check in with Steve in the morning. For now, he wanted to afford Steve whatever sleep he could get, restful or not.

“Steve?” Bucky whispered close to his face.

Nothing out of Steve. He was still, though he looked unhappy as he rested.

“Steve, wake up, there’s a spider on you.”

Nothing.

Bucky sighed. Then he reached up and played with Steve’s hair, pushing it aside. Steve needed a shower, but his hair was still so soft to touch.

“Steve, you’re really… you’re so… Fuck.”

Bucky sighed, stroking Steve’s sleeping face.

“I don’t even know what this is,” Bucky said. “I just know it’s important. I’m not gonna fuck this up. I promise. Okay? Just promise me you’ll stick around so I can make this better.”

There was no reply from the small, sleeping figure that laid over his elbow.

There was an ache in Bucky’s chest, one he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was old and familiar yet he swore he’d never felt like this in his entire life.

#

They watched the story come in on the morning news. _Thank god for seedy journalism_ , thought Bucky. So long as there was inhumanity going on, the news would cover as much of it as possible. The mass arrests had happened over the course of the night, while they fitfully slept. From the footage, they caught a glimpse of Sam walking a suspect in handcuffs, and they both cheered when they saw him.

Phillips briefly give an interview. The basics were there in the address. The dark web sting, the RICO case, the mass arrests and what they were for. The local station was having a field day. It was strange to see his old commander again.

The darker it got, the more the reporters seemed to revel in the details. It was dirty work, but without it, both Steve and Bucky would be waiting for any details whatsoever.

Bucky reached for the remote, but Steve pulled it away before he could touch it.

“I wanna keep watching,” Steve insisted.

“Okay,” Bucky said with a laugh. “But you know, they won’t go back into the story again. It’s all financials and human interest and sports from here on out.”

Steve smirked. “You’re not much for the news are you?”

“It’s just a headache wrapped in a bad mood,” Bucky said. “But I won’t stop you.”

There were more gory stories—shootings, murders, assaults, anything that could be discovered on a police scanner. It seemed that all the news was caught up in Sam’s sting that they had very little else to talk about.

“Hey… so, Steve,” Bucky said. “I think we should talk.”

“Uh oh,” Steve said, turning the TV volume down. “What did I do?”

Bucky laughed. “That’s not—the nightmare last night. If we wanna stay on top of them, it’s good to talk about ‘em.”

Steve was incredulous. “You wanna hear about my nightmares?”

“You know I’m a good listener.”

“You mean like that time you were so distracted by a baseball game you didn’t hear me talk to you for like five minutes?”

“I’m better than I was at seventeen, okay? And, how do you even remember that, by the way?”

“You don’t wanna hear about my fucked-up dreams.”

“I don’t? Or you don’t wanna talk about them.”

Steve met Bucky’s gaze with consternation, mouth sideways and eyes steely. But something must have given way because he sighed and stared at the ground. Rolling his shoulders like he was trying to shrug out of a coat, he settled into the narrative.

“You know I’ve never really talked about this,” Steve said. “I mean, there was one person who listened. I didn’t tell her much, though.”

“Natasha?”

Steve nodded again and Bucky felt the weight of another coin drop into the debts he was accumulating.

“It does help with the nightmares,” Bucky said. “The talking. If you understand it, it doesn’t have the power over you. It’s not this _thing_ creeping in the corner anymore.”

“Did that help you?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky gave no more explanation. It was enough.

Steve’s silence wasn’t heavy. It just was what it was.

“I kick all the time because I’m fighting,” Steve said.

When no more came, Bucky nodded. “Okay.”

“If you wanna get a room with two beds, I understand.”

“I like where I am just fine.”

Pursing his lips, Steve nodded. There was more to say, that much was obvious. But it wouldn’t be coming. Not yet.

When Bucky stepped back, some of his mood dropped. Of course, Steve didn’t have to tell him every private thought in his head. He had a right to them. He had the right never to tell Bucky anything more about what happened to him.

He didn’t expect the hand that laid over his. The tight squeeze. Then Steve let go.

Steve continued to watch the news in silence while Bucky finished his morning routine, brushing his teeth, getting his hair to behave.

That was when Steve shouted his name.

When Bucky came back out of the bathroom, Steve was hovering near the television, remote in hand, the volume going up.

“What is it?” Bucky asked.

“Listen,” Steve said.

_\--the acquisition, valued at an impressive fifty-five billion dollars will have Triskelion absorbing Landon Medical Corporation, pooling the resources of the two firms. Triskelion CEO Alexander Pierce had this to say earlier this evening._

Alexander Pierce took up the screen like a movie star, charismatic and trustworthy. He sat on the other side of an interview, sitting in a comfortable chair, surrounded by corporate office surroundings.

_“Going forward, we have to think about the remarkable responsibility both firms have toward the future and by association, to the citizens of the world. The Triskelion promise to build a better world will remain our rallying cry. With the resources of Landon Medical we can apply our promising research to medical technology.”_

The financial journalist turned to a man sitting patiently in a suit.

_To put this into perspective we’ve brought on Bill Mendelsohn, our chief financial correspondent. So, Bill, what can the market expect from such a merger?_

The talking heads continued to give their takes on the news, but Bucky was already there with his laptop, firing it up and getting connected to the Banner Investigation resources.

“They’re on the news, Bucky,” Steve said. “What are they doing?”

“I didn’t do that great in economics at school,” Bucky confessed. “I’m going to have to get back to you on that.”

_Acquisitions like this are uncommon,_ said Mendelsohn on the television. _Normally you have like pairing with like, for example, Sirius and XM radio coming together for a very successful pool of resources. However, the hedge fund in charge of this acquisition seems to have their mind set on creating a very new kind of company out of these two potential partners_.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked.

“Gimme a sec,” Bucky said as he typed furiously on his computer.

“But what—”

“If there’s a merger worth _that much money_ , we’ve got a problem.”

“Why?”

“Because, if what the man is saying is true, by the end of this week Triskelion might be _too big to fail_.”

Bucky’s phone rang. He picked it up from the desk and, even though he didn’t have the name saved on his phone, he recognized the number.

“It’s Sitwell,” Bucky told Steve.

“Are you seeing this?” Sitwell said over the phone as Bucky picked it up.

“How did we not see this coming?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t know. If I still had journalists that talked to me, I might’ve gotten ahead of this. If we’re going to be taking down a company that big—”

“You don’t have to be telling me. What’s our next move?”

“I think we have something that might put the nail in the coffin. There’s a source I never followed up on, and I’ve just contacted him. He said he’s an ex-employee of Tesseract. Did a lot of work in their labs. Let me meet you guys there. It’s an old facility, been out of use for years. Meet me there in an hour.”

Bucky took down the address and said goodbye, then started to gather his things. Steve stared at him, eyes wide and expectant. Bucky relayed what Sitwell said and Steve went for his jacket.

“Maybe you should stay here,” Bucky said.

“Why would I stay?” Steve said.

The memory of Steve running off with his phone, putting himself and Bucky in danger, flashed in the forefront of Bucky’s mind. There was nothing he wanted to do less than argue the point that Steve might be too reckless to keep bringing along.

But then there was the defiance, mixed in somewhere with the naked desire to understand.

“Could be that the guy we’re going to see might recognize you,” Bucky tried. “He worked for Tesseract.”

“So?” Steve said. “I’m not stayin’ here while you’re taking all the risk. I won’t.”

“Steve—“

“We’ve come this far together. Now’s not the time to start acting like you’re my mother.”

Bucky laughed. “Fair enough. Okay. But the second something smells iffy, if you recognize anyone, if you get a bad feeling, anything, you tell me. He’s Sitwell’s source, but nobody knows the details just yet. None of this standing your ground shit. You turn tail and run.”

Steve nodded, lips pressed together in a tight line.


	13. Chapter 13

Steve peered out from the window of Bucky’s car, taking in the sight of the factory. It was imposing and grand, like an old gothic castle. Its stacks might as well have been spires, and the bulk of it was heavy and beastly. It was grey and red, some of it looking near-black with age, and greenery was beginning to take back the concrete and rust. Stepping out of their car, Bucky could smell the metal and brick-tinged air and wondered what in the hell they were doing there.

“Sitwell said to meet us here?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Said it’s one of Tesseract’s old holdings. They might have made some of their materials for the serums here.”

“It looks like it’s been abandoned too long for that.”

Bucky put his hands in his pockets and considered his surroundings. It did look like it had been abandoned for too long to be of any use to anybody. But on the phone, Sitwell had been pretty vague and urgent. It wasn’t clear to Bucky why they were there, but that didn’t mean he could discount Sitwell.

They went forward, looking for an entrance. There were chains on most of the doors, until they came to the front of the main building. The chains were on the floor and thrown to the side. Someone had been there.

“I don’t have the best feeling right now,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Bucky admitted. “Me neither.”

Nonetheless, Bucky grabbed hold of the rusty door handle with his sleeve and pulled it open.

They both walked inside and Bucky pulled a flashlight from his pocket and scanned the dark room. It was three stories of grated catwalks, stairwells, and abandoned machinery. He wished he’d done his research to figure out what it was all for, but their drive over had been rushed, eager for anything new to develop in the case.

They moved further in, gravel and glass crunching under their feet.

“Sitwell?” Bucky yelled, his voice echoing off the metal and stone.

“Bucky, can we go?” Steve asked.

Bucky turned. Steve’s face was pensive and worried, and he was already backing up, his weight on his heels.

“I think leaving is good,” Bucky said. “Let’s leave.”

The sound of metal on metal exploded in the air and they looked behind them. The door was shaking slightly and Bucky’s heart leapt into his throat. He ran at breakneck speed back up to the platform and tugged on the door.

It wouldn’t open. He could open the door just wide enough to see a sliver into the outside.

The face that stared back at them grinned wickedly, then darted off.

It had been a fraction of a second but he still knew that face, had seen it when he went to sleep the last few nights. He scrambled back and turned. Steve’s eyes were as big as saucers in the low light of the factory.

“We’re locked in,” Steve said.

“There has to be a window, something,” Bucky said, running down into the ground floor.

“Who was that? Who locked us in?”

“Rumlow.”

Steve’s chest puffed in fear and he followed Bucky as they quickly searched for emergency exits. There were plenty, but they were all locked or barred and Bucky kicked the last one they came across in frustration.

A whistle pierced the air. It was musical, high, and travelled through the air like a bird in flight. Bucky and Steve both stilled as they listened to the sound travel, trying to find its source. It was coming above them, in one of the walkways. They heard the clink of hard soles on metal as Rumlow walked above them.

Bucky’s phone rang and he answered it before it could give their position away.

“Sam,” Bucky said.

“ _Where are you?_ ” Sam said, his voice urgent and clipped.

Bucky rattled off the address as Sitwell had given it to him. Bucky began to move, Steve close behind, trying to stay ahead of Rumlow’s confusing shadow and distracting song.

“ _Get out of there_ ,” Sam said.

“Kind of a problem right now,” Bucky said, kicking at another solidly locked door.

“ _We’re on our way_ ,” Sam said. “ _We’re about ten minutes out._ ”

He wanted to ask Sam how he knew to call, but it wasn’t the time. Ten minutes. Ten minutes to dodge one of the deadliest assassins Bucky had ever heard of, staying alive and keeping Steve alive too.

“You’d better make it five,” Bucky said and hung up.

Steve was looking at the stories above him, craning his neck and eyes darting between shadows.

“What do we do?” Steve asked.

Bucky pulled his gun out of his holster and held it down at his side, gesturing for Steve to follow him. They silently moved around the room, trying to stay under cover. Bucky assumed there was another gun in play, and if Rumlow was on the second or third level, sniping them, even with a handgun, would be an easy play.

A shadow ran across the lights of the upper windows and Bucky put himself between it and Steve, raising his gun one-handed to skim the upper levels.

“Someone’s paying a heavy price for you,” Rumlow teased, as his voice echoed through the building. “He wants to see you when this is all over. Right before I spread your guts all over the floor. You’re just another notch on my belt. You’re just another few grand. Your lives are mine. They’re already paid for. Come out little chickadees. Let’s get this over with.”

Bucky could see Steve seethe beside him. “What are we gonna do?” he asked.

“Keep checking the doors,” Bucky said.

“And if they’re all locked?”

“Wait for Sam to bring some bolt-cutters.”

“So just ‘stay alive.’ That’s your plan?”

“If you can think of a better one, let me know.”

Steve bit down on his jaw. His eyes darted back and forth as he thought and Bucky had the horrible vision of Steve in charge. He grabbed Steve’s shirt, across the chest. They locked eyes.

“You are not to do anything stupid, do you get me?” Bucky asked.

“Nothing stupid,” Steve said. “Got it.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve, who balked at him as if he had been kicked.

A boom cracked through the air and a spark came to life about their heads. They ducked and Bucky reached out and grabbed Steve by the arm, yanking him to cover. They moved behind a huge cylinder but the shots kept coming. Bucky had his gun out but there was nothing he could do until the barrage was over. Steve was pressed close to him, and Bucky wasn’t sure if he was holding him close or if Steve was hiding. It could have been both.

There was a rapid series of clicks and Bucky recognized the sound of an empty magazine clip. He rounded the outside of the machinery, tugging Steve until the other was running behind him.

There was a long corridor, which he was sure lead to another part of the factory. The hallway was open, without much cover, but they had to risk it. They hugged the wall once in a while to look behind them but in the deep dark they couldn’t see a figure coming out of the shadows. Shadow blended into shadow and they all seemed to creep and grow deeper.

“You know,” Rumlow’s voice cried out from the darkness. “I prefer to do this more intimately.”

Another shot rang out and a puff of concrete exploded by Bucky’s face. A sharp pain went through his temple, radiating out onto his face.

“Bucky!” Steve cried.

“Go! Cover!” Bucky shouted.

They rounded the corner and Bucky put his hand on the side of his face, finding it wet.

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve whispered. “You’re bleeding.”

Bucky took his hand away and saw his fingers were red. He gave himself a mental check. He didn’t feel in pain. It didn’t make him dizzy to turn his head. Still, he knew it was a headwound, and that it wasn’t good that it was freely bleeding.

“I’m okay,” Bucky said. “I’m okay, I’m okay. It’s okay, Steve. Just stay low.”

“I know that smell!” Rumlow yelled. “Knicked ya, didn’t I? Those drops are _mine_. And I’m comin’ for the rest.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I’m not getting killed by this asshole.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Bucky agreed. “Come on, up the stairs.”

There were stairs nearby and they were a loud, metal flight that creaked and swayed as they ran up them, but they had no choice. They heard Rumlow’s limping steps close behind on the concrete.

Bucky pulled Steve into a corner and they pressed into the shadows between two tall cylinders. Bucky’s gun was up, close to his body as he waited for Rumlow to walk by.

Rumlow was a graceless stalker, coming right after where he _thought_ they had gone, without looking around to check corners or to see if anybody was flanking him. He didn’t think to look into the corner where Steve and Bucky were waiting for him to pass.

Bucky began to creep out, leading with his gun—

Steve grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back. He shook his head. Bucky shrugged, trying to understand what Steve was wordlessly telling him. Steve pressed his finger to his lips and then pointed down, to the story below. Bucky crouched and watched Rumlow limp further down the hallway until he took a turn and disappeared into shadow.

Steve lead him down and away, back the way they had come.

“What are we doing?” Bucky whispered.

“Quiet,” Steve said. “Follow me.”

Every once and a while they heard Rumlow scream and kick something hollow and metallic. He was getting frustrated that his quarry had gone to ground. Rumlow even shot a few times into nothing, and Steve and Bucky ducked at the sudden boom.

“He had to have come from somewhere,” Steve said. “Probably back here, where we didn’t get to look.”

_Smart_ , though Bucky, though he wasn’t sure Rumlow would have left anything open behind him. It was worth a shot, he figured, and Bucky didn’t have any better ideas. After all, he was getting woozy…

“Breadcrumbs!” snapped an angry voice.

Bucky searched behind him. Then he touched his head. He looked down at the ground where a shaft of sunlight had lit up the dirt and saw tiny spatters of red. His wound hadn’t stopped up at all. He was leaving a fresh trail of red dots behind him and Rumlow had picked up on it like a bloodhound.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky spat. He held up his gun to wait for Rumlow to come around the corner. His hand was shaking and his wound took that moment to bleed into his eye.

“Hold on,” Steve commanded.

Bucky lowered his weapon as Steve darted out in front of him and crouched low to the ground.

Rumlow came around the corner, his face lit up in a wild grin. His shooting arm was straight and Bucky was looking down the barrel of it, his heart seizing at the sight of being one step behind.

Rumlow clutched his face and yowled. Bucky balked at the sight. Steve had taken a clump of dirt and thrown it in his face, the dusty plume erupting around his eyes. It had nearly immobilized Rumlow as he reeled and rubbed at his eyes.

Bucky came forward and pressed the gun against his temple. Rumlow froze up at the feeling of metal on skin, even though he couldn’t open his eyes. He slowly spread his hands out.

Steve stepped up and took his gun, snatching it out of a limp grip. He put on the gun’s safety, just like Bucky had taught him at the range. “I got it,” he said.

“You sure you know how to handle that, big boy?” Rumlow teased, sight beginning to come back after so much rapid blinking.

“Can I shoot him?” Steve asked. “Please?”

“ _Who sent you?_ ” Bucky snapped, jabbing Rumlow hard with his gun one more time.

Rumlow seethed, blinking more and looking his former quarry up and down through the dirt. “You think I’m going to tell you that? What the hell are you going to do to me? Shoot me?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on. I don’t believe for a second—”

There was a boom and Rumlow and Steve jumped. Steve looked at him, aghast, and Rumlow seemed to be mentally going over his body to see what part of him must have been shot. It hadn’t. Bucky had let the bullet fly over his head, landing somewhere in a concrete wall on the other side of the factory. Bucky could see Rumlow’s mind working in overtime as he reconsidered the sentence he’d been in the middle of spitting out.

“My friend Detective Wilson is on his way,” Bucky said. “When he gets here, you’re going to jail for a long time. But we can help make that suck a little less if you just give me a name.”

“Fuck you,” Rumlow said.

“A name.”

“ _Killroy_.”

“Funny. Keep making jokes and see where it gets you.”

“You won’t kill me.”

There was a click as the safety was turned off a gun. Bucky turned and saw Steve holding Rumlow’s gun up, feet planted in weaver stance. Rumlow was panting and looking down the sight of the skinny arms holding the heavy gun.

“I will,” Steve said.

“Steve—,” Bucky started.

“He killed Erskine.”

“Don’t take it personal, kid,” Rumlow growled. “Just providing a service. I’m not the real one you should be mad at.”

“Then who?” Steve asked.

“You don’t got it in ya.”

“Don’t I? I’m off the grid. I’ve never had my fingerprints taken. Nobody knows where I am or where I’ve been. I’m invisible. I can get away with it. I can disappear again and they’d never find me. I got nothin’ to lose. How about you?”

Steve pulled back the hammer of the gun.

Bucky felt his body quake. It was the fact that everything Steve said was true. He could get away with murder. He could go back to whatever life he’d been living before, under whatever name and the police would never find him—and neither would Bucky. The specter of loss was hanging in front of him and Bucky didn’t know what to do to make it all stop. Because if Steve was bluffing, he’d break the spell it had on Rumlow. And if he wasn’t—

Rumlow’s face fell. It seemed for a man who took life like it meant nothing, he held his own fairly dear.

“I’m not supposed to know his name,” Rumlow said. “Not supposed to know any of their names. But I do my research.”

“ _Who_?” Steve demanded.

“The guy’s name is Zola. German or some shit.”

“Swiss.”

“Yeah. Whatever. First job was for Barnes. Second one’s for both of you. He seemed especially interested in _you_ this time around.”

Steve’s arms trembled a bit, but he got it under control.

“Why me?” Steve asked.

“’Cause he wanted me to drag you back to him,” Rumlow said. He looked Steve up and down. “Couldn’t tell you why.”

Steve was shaking more now. Bucky tensed as he realized how close Steve’s finger was to the trigger, and how unsteady his hands were becoming. Rumlow’s expression changed, became more predatory. He saw it, too.

“Alright, this is over,” Bucky said. “Tell us how to get out of here.”

“You ain’t asked nicely,” Rumlow teased.

“I _will_ cold-cock you,” Bucky threatened. “March.”

Bucky took time out to be miserable. His broken arm was sore, he was woozy, blood was in his eye, and the threat of Steve leaving had been big and real as life. He was tired. He _would_ shoot the man.

Steve put the safety on the gun and some of Bucky’s tension relieved.

The sound of sirens could be heard coming closer and closer. As Rumlow led the way his steps began to slow.

“Fuck this,” Rumlow muttered.

He turned and barreled right into Bucky, who went flying to the ground. He heard Rumlow running full-tilt, as fast as he could with a limp, flying up the stairs to the floors above.

There was a bang on metal and then the sound of metal snapping. A burst of light nearly blinded him as the door opened.

And there they were, surrounded by haloes of light like two goddamned avenging angels. Detectives Sam Wilson and Sharon Carter, hands by their side-arms, scanning the factory and spotting Bucky and Steve crouched on the floor, one of them bloodied.

“He went upstairs!” Bucky yelled.

Sam flew past them and up the stairs, Sharon coming up to them and crouching down. She took out the radio from her side and Sam listened to her ask for the medical assistance to get there as fast as they could.

“I’m alright,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, it’s just a headwound, right?” Sharon said, voice deadpan.

Bucky could only shrug.

Three shots rang out and Sharon’s eyes went wide. Bucky gestured for her to go.

“Go get ‘im,” Bucky said.

Sharon touched his shoulder, once, and ran up the stairs with her weapon drawn to look for her partner. Bucky was left alone with Steve, but he could hear the commotion just outside, what was likely uniformed officers manning the perimeter.

He felt Steve’s hands go to his shoulders and grip them tight. Bucky was half-blind, but he could see enough of Steve’s face when he touched his forehead to his.

“I’m okay,” Bucky assured him.

“No, you’re not,” Steve said. “How many more hits are you going to take for me?”

“It’s not my fault they keep comin’.”

Bucky’s grin was weak, but it did the trick. Steve tried to hide the wry smile that wanted to worm its way onto his face. Bucky reached up and brushed some dirt off of Steve’s flushing red cheek and all he wanted to do was find comfort in wrapping his arms around Steve’s body, tackle him to the ground, and lay there until he was satisfied.

Instead, the medical team came in the door.

#

“You think he’s gonna live?” Bucky asked Sam.

“Kind of wasn’t the point when I shot him,” Sam confessed.

Looking around at the four of them gathered there, it seemed like there was no mourning for the possible death of Brock “Crossbones” Rumlow, serial killer for hire.

Bucky hissed as the last stitch was put into his brow. There was a large gash from the bullet grazing him, and red, bloody pock-marks of concrete shrapnel in his cheek. The first responder was taking good care of him, but some petulant part of him was just under the surface. He wanted to kick and wind his face away from her care, but he stood stock still and let her do her work.

“His name was Jasper Sitwell?” Sharon asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “He’s been giving us information about the case, but something’s changed. I don’t know why he set us up. He seemed on the up-and-up. None of the information he gave us so far was bad. Not even just not-bad, it’s been gangbusters. I don’t know what happened.”

“Listen,” Sam said. “I get that you gotta lay low. But before you do—”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll be giving a full statement.”

“No, after that. You’re not going back to your love-nest until you’re good and taken care of.”

“Taken care of?” Steve asked.

Bucky sighed, knowing what was coming next. He turned to Steve and raised an apologetic brow.


	14. Chapter 14

Sam was scooped up into an embrace the moment he unlocked the door to his apartment. A tall, blonde man pressed his face into Sam’s neck and squeezed him tight. Sam patted this man’s back and rubbed it comfortingly. They rocked back and forth for a moment while Bucky, Steve, and Sharon stood back at the door.

“You okay?” the man asked.

“I’ll be alright,” Sam said. “Babe, come on. We got company.”

The man pulled back from Sam and stared at the small group blocking the door.

“Hey, Riley,” Bucky said as Sam led them into his apartment.

He pulled Bucky into a tight hug. Riley was a hugger. He was sure that Sam had called ahead and explained the recent mortal peril, from how much of a mother hen he was being.

Sharon came forward next and they hugged familiarly. “We’re all okay, Riley.”

Then Riley turned to see the stranger, a slight figure standing in his doorway, holding himself nervously with his bangs hanging over his brow. He slicked his hair back and gave a slight, confident smile.

“Riley, this is—,” Bucky began.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said, holding his hand out.

Riley shook his hand, only as a precursor to a hug. Steve’s eyes bulged and he jumped at the sudden touch, but he relaxed into it. Bucky maybe should have warned Steve about Riley’s all-or-nothing affections, but he couldn’t help but smirk at Steve’s surprise and growing warmth for the stranger.

Riley was good at comfort food. It was Italian, slow-cooked, and the kind of carbs Bucky had been denying himself to stay fit. He could care less about it now, his head still sore and pounding, body aching, and nerves rattled. Chicken parmesan with a side of penne was exactly what the doctor ordered.

For once, Steve seemed to be in the mood to chow down. Riley’s cooking could do that to you. Steve looked the part of some sort of Victorian street orphan, his clothes still ragged and trying to hide how hungry he was but still scarfing the food down like it was the last he’d see for who-knows-how-long.

Riley stood in the corner of the living room with Sharon. The two of them seemed to be having an intense conversation. In the kitchen, Sam, Steve, and Bucky hugged the edge of the island in the kitchen. They glanced at them nervously, but mostly worked on their plates.

“I think Sharon is saving your life right now,” Bucky said, plucking some penne onto his fork.

“I’m still gonna get an earful,” Sam said.

“Why?” Steve asked. “You were doing your job.”

Sam held up his right hand, back of the hand out, to best display the simple wedding band on his finger.

“Because that’s what happens when you’ve got someone to worry about,” Sam said. “You get pissed at them.”

Steve seemed to chew on those words before he went back to another slice of chicken.

“We’re not putting you in any danger, are we?” Steve asked after a pause. “I mean… they’ve come after us before.”

Sam laughed, short and curt. “You’ve got three ex-military men in the apartment, one of them a cop, another a PI, with a sharpshooter and a dirty fighter to round it out. They’re not going to try anything. Not tonight.”

“Dirty fighter?” Steve asked.

Bucky had a full mouth of food, so he pointed directly at Steve’s face. Steve balked and for a second looked half-way proud. His whole posture shifted and he seemed to be shrinking from the room a little less.

“So,” Steve asked, eking his way into small-talk. “Cops and sharp-shooters aside—what’s your husband do?”

“Home business,” Sam said. “I managed to marry an accountant. A good one.”

“A little less exciting than police work,” Riley said, pointedly darting his eyes at Sam as he entered the kitchen. “But it keeps me busy. Steve, do you want some of this wine? I can decant some more.”

Steve shook his head and quickly remembered his manners. “No, thank you.”

Bucky held out his glass. “Fuck me up.”

Sharon and Sam laughed and Riley raised a brow, but he poured Bucky a hefty amount anyway. Bucky wasn’t much for wine, more of a beer drinker, a vice he couldn’t even give up for fitness, but any port in a storm. He tasted the tannins and the tartness soured his palate a little bit. All the same, it was good with the dinner.

For a few hours, it was just dinner and friends. Steve began to unwind, even without partaking in the wine. There was nothing there to be wary about, and Steve sensed it. He laughed at stories and slowly, began to know the small group as friends. Bucky wondered how willing he was to have new friends, or if he was just playing at normality for a night.

Worry scrambled Bucky’s gut, already stuffed with food and wine. He propped his head up on his fist, his elbow jammed onto the edge of the table, and watched. For a moment, he wasn’t part of the conversation. He could just watch. Riley was telling a story and the whole company was leaning in, even Steve. He felt like a ghost, watching from a plane outside observable space. He was safe there to gaze at Steve’s slowly opening face. The story was getting funnier and Steve was getting more comfortable. He began to open up, smiling and laughing. This was a familiar Steve. He could see the past roll out in front of him, an evening after seeing some terrible movie, laughing and joking. Or after some lame school assembly, making light of the mandatory fun the administration was always trying to force on them.

But this was different. This was Steve, grown up, at an impromptu dinner party. The low lamplight made his hair and skin glow, and his eyes were bright. Bucky pictured not the past any longer, but the future. He pictured this like it was a slice of their life, together. A life where Steve was settled, and he knew Bucky’s friends, and had some of his own.

He pictured his apartment, cleaned up a little, and two places set at the small kitchen table. He pictured normal. He pictured Steve coming home from a job. He pictured having Sam, Sharon, and Riley over for once. He pictured Steve in some decent clothes and—

He was drunk.

The story came to an end and they all laughed, but Bucky had missed the end of it. Steve turned to him, expecting Bucky to be laughing, too. Instead, Bucky smiled, just for him. Steve was suddenly bashful and turned away.

#

They stumbled into their hotel room and the first thing that happened was that Bucky caught his toe on the edge of a box. He howled and saw Steve seethe sympathetically beside him. Bucky swore and shook his limbs, hopping further into the room. The door swung shut behind him and he clumsily pulled off his coat.

All of his ire seemed to drain out of his body as he collapsed onto the bed. Looking up at the ceiling, he began to see the flaws in the room that was going to be their hide-out for the near future. The slight misalignment of the smoke alarm, the off-color of the popcorn ceiling—everything just seemed sub-par and more than a little pathetic. And it was spinning. He could still taste the budding berry notes of the wine on his tongue.

He felt the weight of the bed shift as Steve crawled up onto it. He opened his arm and let Steve snuggle up to him, throwing his arm and one leg over Bucky’s body. It felt so good to have Steve close. He rolled into Steve’s embrace, hugging him tight against his body, cradling the crown of his head protectively.

The day and night spread itself in front of his mind like a tapestry. In the oasis of the dinner party, he’d found some perspective on it all.

Some part of him had believed Steve’s threat to Rumlow, a promise to take a life and disappear like a ghost. It wasn’t so much that he was going to make good on his promise, but that the architecture to do just that existed, waiting to be taken advantage of.

And then there was Steve in the midst of people and friends, like he really belonged.

“You’re gonna be here when I wake up, right?” Bucky asked.

Bucky cringed, inwardly, at the sound of his own voice. It was delicate, choking on something like crying. Steve sat up and Bucky could feel how Steve was studying his face, even though he threw his cast over his eyes. The light was killing him.

He felt Steve get out of bed, then something at his feet. He looked down to see Steve working his boots free.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “I’m drunk. You can’t take advantage of me.”

“I’m not letting you fall asleep with your boots on, ya moron,” Steve said.

Bucky groaned and laid his head back, throwing his cast back over his eyes. When Steve came back he was holding something and pulling Bucky to sit up.

“At least one glass, okay?” Steve said.

Bucky chugged the glass of water. He was thirsty, and he hadn’t noticed.

And then—

And then he didn’t know what happened next, just that it was getting dark and someone was watching over him.

#

_Nicotine had nowhere to go in the Hum-V, so it hovered around Bucky’s head in a blue cloud. He was used to the smell. It used to make him sick, but after a year in a warzone, he’d smelled worse things. He was bored enough that he almost wanted to smoke himself, but he thought about tarred lungs and shallow breath and decided to pass. He’d breathed in enough smoke and gunpowder for a lifetime._

_“I can’t believe we’re about to get our goddamn mail,” Jones said. “I feel like we’ve been cut off forever. My girl said she’d send a package this time. I just hope she didn’t put cookies or something in it. Break my heart, that would. Stale-ass, wasted cookies.”_

_“I just wanna watch a fucking movie,” Bucky said. “Just turn my head off for two hours. I hope they haven’t gotten rid of the DVD guy.”_

_“Man, those DVDs are always shit quality,” Jones said._

_“I’ll take what I can get.”_

_“You don’t got mail coming to you?”_

_“Probably my sister. Or mom.”_

_“No girl?”_

_Bucky shrugged and looked out the window. The Iraqi countryside was beautiful, despite the way the news liked to film it. It was just too bad about the mortars and the bullet holes._

_“Oh, sorry, my bad? No guy?” Jones teased._

_Bucky got his middle finger as close to Jones’ face as he could. Jones laughed while Bucky chewed on his annoyance. Everybody knew, but the rule was still “don’t ask don’t tell.” These were his guys, his unit. They had his back and they didn’t give a shit. Didn’t stop them from ribbing him whenever they could. Bucky figured they just liked that he couldn’t say shit back._

_At base, Jones held his package above his head in jubilation, ripping it apart the next second. Bucky just smirked and moved to his cot, where a small pile of envelopes waited for him. There were a couple of letters about his admission to the criminal justice program, and some paperwork for the apartment that waited for him when he got back in a month. Then there was Becca’s letter._

_He opened it first, lying back and propping himself up on the wall._

_Hey,_

_What’s up, brother? So, just about the stuff you asked about last time: me and Jesse broke up, no need to feel sorry for me. It was a mutual thing, whatever. So, obviously, he won’t be at the airport when I pick you up. He’s moving to DC anyway, no big deal._

_I just want you to know I’m so happy you’re coming home. Everybody’s waiting to see you. We’re just really proud you’re gonna be going to school and we’re here for you with whatever you need._

_And I know you’re probably waiting for me to talk about what we discussed last time. I still haven’t found him. I know you were hoping something would have come up, but you gotta remember that he’s an adult now, same as you. Keep checking google and facebook. He’ll pop up. People always do, I swear. I’m getting friend requests from people I haven’t seen since elementary school. It’s wild, and crazy-addicting._

_And I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but sometimes people just drift. High school friends sometimes don’t follow us. You’re gonna make a lot of friends in college, I know it. I don’t want you to forget about Steve. Maybe it’s just time to let him go, and be his own person._

_There was more to the letter. A lot more. Becca had a lot going on, and she wanted to know everything about how he was doing. She was worrying, mom was proud, and on and on._

_A malaise sat over Bucky as he sat there with his letter in his hands. It wasn’t the first time someone had told him that. Leave it alone, he’s not really missing, he’ll show up. It went on forever. He didn’t understand why no one else felt this unease._

_He went to his footlocker and pulled out one of the few things he’d allowed himself to bring from home, part of the insistence he had made of himself that he would come out of the army a man, leaving the things of childhood behind._

_The stationery set was worse for wear, the cheap plastic casing dinged and cracked from being in the heavy footlocker. He remembered Steve’s paper being edged in blue, while his was edged in red. He pulled out a cheap ballpoint pen and held it close to the paper, sat cross-legged on his cot, waiting for the words to come._

_They wouldn’t. Not at first._

_The futility of it came to him. Nobody knew where Steve was, and his foster parents had gone from not forwarding the letters, to returning them, then finally to promising that every letter sent from there on in would be thrown in the trash._

_Bucky stilled, the sticky end of the pen hovering._

_Hey, Steve,_

_I don’t really know where this letter is going to be sent, or when. But I figured, if you were dead or something I’d know it somehow. In my gut. I always felt like, if you were hurting I was hurting too, so if you were dead I’d feel numb somewhere or something. Well, I’m hurting, Steve, but I’m not numb, so that’s something. I don’t know what to tell you. I wonder sometimes if it’s me just worrying, or if something really messed up is going on. But I don’t like not knowing where you are._

_If this letter finds its way to you, I want you to know a few things. I want you to know I joined the army, just like our dads. I haven’t seen a lot of action, and they say that’s good. I’m not in a hurry to know what it’s like. I want you to know that Becca’s growing up and I’m terrified. I want you to know my mom asks if I’ve heard anything about you yet, but she’s trying not to be worried, too. I want you to know what happened senior year. I want you to know I wish—_

_The ballpoint pen suddenly stopped working. He rubbed it into the corner of the paper and all it managed to do was make a small, scribbly divot in the paper. His teeth ground as he tried one more time, but, finding if futile, let the pen roll away._

_He couldn’t recall what he wished Steve had known. It had flown away from him as soon as the pen stopped working. All he could do was picture the inside of his apartment, and he was staring at the door, knowing Steve was on the other side of it, rapidly diminishing from his life._

_There was a winding of commotion and his sergeant came into the bunk. He announced that the company was going north, and that if their sissy asses didn’t want to be left behind, they’d better get their asses up and into a Hum-V, fast._

_Not knowing it was going to be the event that separated the boy from the man, Bucky grabbed his gear and headed towards the gunfire that was raging ten clicks outside of Fellujah._

#

“Yeah. We can make that work. Thank you for understanding. This afternoon, then. You might be saving our lives, here. Yeah. Definitely. Thanks.”

The words sounded like they were coming from underwater. At the knowledge of light, Bucky tried to curl further into his sheets. His entire body felt like it was covered in a layer of sweat and he wanted little else but to forget his body and disappear back into unconsciousness.

When he dared to open one eye, he saw Steve sitting at the table by the window, still in his boxer shorts, hanging up Bucky’s phone. He madly scribbled something down on the hotel stationery. Knowing he was being watched, he paused and looked over his shoulder. There was something working in his eyes when he saw Bucky staring back at him. It was a wariness that was the cousin of fear. He glanced quickly at the pad, finished writing, and got out of the chair.

“What time is it?” Bucky asked, voice coming from some under-dimension where sleep still was.

“Ten o’clock,” Steve said.

Bucky swore and pushed himself up. That was _late_ , at least by his standards. A hangover was still clawing at his brain, but it wasn’t the worst one he’d had recently, not by a long-shot. The only problem is that it was a _wine_ hangover. He felt like he had been put into a can for preserving.

“I’m up,” Bucky said with a mighty groan. “Were you… what were you doing on my phone?”

“I had an idea,” Steve said. “And you weren’t waking up.”

“That doesn’t mean _you_ have to start making phone calls.”

“You’re gonna be glad I did.”

“After coffee.”

“After _water_.”

Steve was right—he had wanted to brush his teeth and down some refrigerated, filtered water more than he wanted coffee. He felt the pickling process start to reverse and his facilities begin to come back to him.

Unfortunately, so did memories.

He didn’t want to bring up what he had said, hoping that his cracked voice and childish fear had disappeared with the banishment of the night. Steve wasn’t saying anything about it, just tossing Bucky the bottle of Excedrin from the nightstand and getting on with the morning.

“So, who was it?” Bucky asked.

“One of Erskine’s old colleagues,” Steve said. “I checked. It was someone from his address book.”

Steve pushed over photocopies from his murder file, the copies of Erskine’s address book that the detective in charge had bothered to scan. Bucky paused, having to make an effort to swallow his pills. Steve was _investigating_. And he was doing a good job of it, too. He’d highlighted some names and crossed out others, using post-its to make notes that Bucky would have to ask about later.

“What did you tell him?” Bucky asked

“Her,” Steve corrected. “That we’d meet her this afternoon.”

Bucky blanched. He took another drink of water so his voice didn’t rattle like some kind of Marianne Faithful song.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky admonished. “Just some random person out of his address book? We don’t even know who this person is. They could be anybody, they—”

“I know, Bucky. But I think we should get in contact with her. It’s worth the risk.”

“Why?”

“She said she’s a scientist. A bio-engineer, like Erskine.”

“Sitwell also said he was an honest journalist. Saying don’t make it so.”

“Well, I had to do _something_. I’ve been up since 6 a.m., trying to figure out what to do next.”

“That’s _my_ job.”

Steve rolled his eyes and reached for his old laptop. It whirred and complained as it booted and Bucky’s eyes darted to his own, new MacBook Pro and a guilt that he couldn’t account for stung at him.

“Here,” Steve said. “I’ve Googled her. I Googled just about everybody in this book.”

Bucky pulled the laptop closer to him. Several windows were open on the humming machine. A woman stared out at him, hair pinned back neatly and shoulders poised. The name “Dr. Helen Cho” was highlighted in yellow, a secondary part of the search highlighted in green. The cross-referenced word was Tesseract. There was a brief employment history with them, from two-thousand and fifteen to two-thousand and sixteen.

“She worked for them,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, but so did Erskine,” Steve said. “For a little while. Before he figured out what they were.”

“Just because Erskine knew her doesn’t mean he could trust her.”

“You said it yourself—the next step is figuring out what they were up to. Unless you’ve got a degree in bio-medical engineering that I don’t know about, someone has to look at the formula Erskine was hiding. Do you got any better ideas?”

Bucky read the rest of the article on Dr. Cho. Her stint at Tesseract had been brief, and at that point Tesseract had been a larger company. She could have been in a division completely disconnected from the experimentation—they could have taken advantage of her research just the same as they had Erskine’s.

“It’s worth the risk,” Bucky said. “If we don’t know what they were even trying to make…”

“What’s the plan if you’re right, and she’s one of the bad guys?” Steve asked.

Bucky reached up the table and grabbed the stack of index cards. He flipped through them, finding that the formulas looked like an alien language to him. Without someone to understand them, they were useless.

“We’re meeting her in public, right?” Bucky said.

“Some fancy café in Manhattan,” Steve said. “One o’clock.”

“Fancy, huh? Then we’re leaving now.”

“But it’s hours from now. Why—?”

“Because if it’s fancy we’re at least stopping by H&M and getting you a decent fucking t-shirt.”

Steve made a face and looked down at his clothes, pulling at his t-shirt to examine what Bucky was talking about, fingering the holes and tears in it. Bucky could see Steve make ready to protest before thinking better of it and slumping back into his chair.

#

There was nothing they could do about the bagginess of the clothes, but they fit and they were in decent shape, and that’s mostly what Bucky was worried about. When Steve tried to hide himself inside his large, military coat, Bucky snatched it away from him and threw it in the back seat. Steve glared, but wordlessly ceded to the logic of it. He’d just been given a new button-up and t-shirt, and the hoodie to round it out was as much hiding in his clothes as he was going to allow Steve to have that day.

The café was nice. He was glad he’d made the call to get Steve a decent shirt, because they really might have been carted out of there on Steve’s account. What looked like mostly lawyers and businessmen sat with their laptops and paperwork, getting furiously caffeinated on what was probably their lunch breaks. Uptown women were sitting together with pastries and petite cups.

They spotted her on the outdoor patio. Dr. Cho had already ordered, sipping delicately at a steaming drink, her eyes on her tablet. She didn’t notice them until they were right next to her, and her face broke out into a polite smile. It was professional, warm, but not familiar.

“I hope you don’t mind I got started without you,” Dr. Cho said. “I won’t be able to talk long, I have a meeting with Korea scheduled right after this. You must be—”

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said, putting his hand out and giving hers a firm shake.

She looked him up and down, and Bucky wondered how she must be seeing him. If she was clocking the new clothes, or just assessing him like a doctor. There was a lot to consider from that angle, just from looking at Steve, how thin he was, his pallor, the red in his eyes. He wondered what her diagnosis was.

“James Barnes,” he said, shaking her hand as well, matching her delicate grip, careful not to overpower her.

He recognized it when someone found him attractive, her eyes flitting over his body and smiling delicately. She was barking up the wrong tree, but there was nothing wrong with a little bit of attraction to smooth things over.

“I understand that you’re friends of Dr. Erskine’s,” Dr. Cho said. “It’s been years since we’ve spoken. How is he?”

Steve opened his mouth to speak, but Bucky grabbed and squeezed his knee to signal he was taking over.

“I’m afraid he’s passed, Dr. Cho,” Bucky said.

She blanched and stiffened. Then she cast her eyes down. “That’s terrible. When?”

“Just this week.”

“Oh, my. I should pay my respects.”

“The funeral was earlier this week.”

“I’m sorry I missed it. I should send flowers, in any case. You said this was concerning him?”

Bucky reached into his breast pocket and took out the stack of cards from Erskine’s apartment and handed them over to her. She put down her coffee and took them. She peered down at the formulas and began to sift through the cards. She leaned back in her chair and began to flip through them with deepening interest. She looked first at Bucky and then at Steve, the back again.

“These are his?” Dr. Cho asked.

“Yes,” Bucky said. “And we don’t know what they mean.”

“Why do you need to know?”

“It’s just that soon after he wrote this formula, a formula he started working on at Tesseract while you were both employed there, he was murdered.”

At the sound of that word she sat up in her chair. She nervously pushed her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ears, though they were only a few, fashionable strands.

“You don’t think this has anything to do with why, do you?” she asked.

“Dr. Cho—,” Bucky started.

“Helen, please.”

“Helen. We can’t be sure. Not until we know what this is.”

“I know what this is, certainly. I worked on something very similar. I don’t know why anybody would kill someone over this. That can’t be why.”

“Entertain us?”

Helen glanced over at Steve, finally interested in the smaller man. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I fully understand who you are.”

“I was a friend of Erskine’s,” Steve said. “Met him in his Tesseract days, too.”

“You seem awfully young to have worked for Tesseract.”

That clinched it. Dr. Cho had no idea what Tesseract was really up to. She would have clocked Steve for one of the test subjects as quickly as Sitwell had. Besides, looking at her demeanor and considering that she worked for a completely different company now, she didn’t seem the illegal human experimentation type.

“I didn’t,” Steve said. “Erskine and I were working on a medical malpractice suit against them.”

The lie came back easily to Steve, the one he’d introduced himself with to Bucky. It was another one of those lies-by-omission, one close enough to the truth that Steve was comfortable with the words in his mouth.

Dr. Cho narrowed her eyes at him, more out of confusion that suspicion. Her eyes roamed over the cards again, and then over Steve once again. Then she turned her gaze to Bucky.

“And you are?” Helen asked.

“I’m a private investigator,” Bucky said. “We’re trying to put the pieces back together. If this does have something to do with his death, we need to find out what it is and why someone would kill over it.”

“And you want me to tell you what this is?”

“Please. If you have any clue what it could mean, we could start to understand what this was all for.”

Dr. Cho chewed on her thoughts, and Bucky was going to let her. There was only so much prodding he could do. It was ultimately in her hands. It was a vulnerable place to stand, waiting for someone’s decision. Bucky just tried not to squirm or slouch as if it were.

“I know what this is,” Helen said. “I’m not sure to what, but it has the basic structure of anti-bodies. What kind, I don’t know.”

Steve swallowed. It looked like a sick realization had hit him, one that was only possible at that exact moment. “I might know.”

Dr. Cho peered at him in genuine curiosity. “Why?”

“I think they might be my anti-bodies.”


	15. Chapter 15

Dr. Cho cancelled her meeting.

She had taken the blood and went away to process it immediately, though they were certain it was going against some unspoken law of the lab not to jump in front of the lines. All there was left was the waiting. After the blood draw they stepped out for lunch, a real lunch, before wandering back to her lab an hour later.

Steve didn’t exactly seem comfortable in Dr. Cho’s examination office. It was gleaming white, clean, and smelled of sterilization. Steve’s foot started to twitch up and down as he looked around the small room. He clutched the edge of the bed with white knuckles. It didn’t help that the doctor wasn’t done yet, and they’d been waiting a half an hour.

“It just feels like they’re going to burst in the door any second,” Steve said. “Or like I’m already back in, and I just don’t know it yet.”

“You’re fine, Steve,” Bucky promised.

“But what if she’s just another HYDRA—”

“Then I’ll shoot her.”

Steve’s laugh was bitter, but his smile was genuine. “I know you will.”

“After everything?” Bucky said. “Damn right.”

“She’s harmless. I’m being paranoid. I just wish I wasn’t. It feels like… it’s like…”

Bucky rubbed circles against Steve’s bony back. Steve let his face drop into a shaking hand. He made a small, frustrated noise. It wasn’t a sob, just a grunt, and he kicked his heel against the metal of the examination table.

“Breathe, alright?” Bucky said. “You’re safe. I’m here. Nobody’s coming to get you. Nobody even knows where we are right now. Dr. Cho’s gonna help us figure out if we’re right about the anti-body thing.”

“I just wish I didn’t feel like I was going to burst,” Steve said. “But I’m staying here. I have to know. I have to know what was worth killing him for. What’s worth experimenting on us for. We’re so close, I can feel it.”

Dr. Cho came back into the room and Steve’s attention was brought back up. He smoothed his hair back out of his eyes and sat up, spine straightened. Bucky patted Steve on the back to steady him.

“You were right,” Dr. Cho said. “The artificial antibodies in Erskine’s formula are an exact match to the ones in your blood. But I can’t figure out what they are an anti-body to.”

“Can you reverse-engineer it?” Bucky asked.

“Mr. Barnes, the technology it takes to create artificial antibodies is new and incredibly advanced, the likelihood of having the technology to reverse-engineer it—”

“We’re too into science-fiction territory to do that, got it. But is there anything else you can tell us? Anti-bodies make vaccines. So, it’s a vaccine they’re after?”

“This isn’t just a vaccine. This is a cure. Introduce this into a bloodstream and the body doesn’t _have to_ create its own antibodies, though it certainly will. The potential serum you could create with this formula would act as cure _and_ create long-term immunity.”

Bucky’s mind began its furious interrogation again. What was an organization like this doing curing the world of diseases, a genuine good, while tearing lives apart? What was the ultimate goal? What disease were they out to cure? And—

“Is Steve still infected?” Bucky asked, feeling Steve tense beside him.

“No,” Helen said. “I found no infections in his bloodwork that I tested for.”

Both of their shoulders dropped. He remembered Steve’s reaction to the possibility that he was diseased the other day, panicking as he paced back and forth, unable to sit down. He wondered at the relief Steve must be feeling, and if he’d been holding on to the sickly, cringing feeling the last few days.

“Then why am I still—?” Steve asked, then gestured to his entire body.

“My guess?” Helen said. “Some diseases tend to ravage the body. I’m not sure what the symptoms were, but even if you were cured, other parts of your bodily functions can be compromised. Maybe if you let me run some more tests and explained what exactly the symptoms were—”

“No,” Steve said. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

“It’s complicated,” Bucky said, by way of apology. “Listen, I know that this is big—possibly world-changing stuff—but we were wondering if you could sit on this for a while.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t use another person’s proprietary formulas. But may I continue examining it? I may have more to tell you.”

“That would be fine. Better than fine. I can’t stress enough, though—do not share this with anybody. A lot of people have been getting hurt over this.”

“Well, you’re the detective. I’ll take you at your word. I don’t have any plans to get murdered over something like this. I’ll do all the analysis myself.”

#

The garage was cold and silent, and the hollow quiet of the car sat heavy around them. Steve was slumped in his seat, and Bucky could see the heavy thinking that was pressing his brow down.

“You okay?” Bucky said.

Steve seemed to be trying to figure out what to say to that, so Bucky sat back and listened to the compressed silence around them. Quiet didn’t bother him. He was a patient man, and he was willing to let himself sit for as long as Steve needed. He let his gaze linger, neutral, expectant. Steve seemed aware, but unbothered, by it.

“Sorry, I was just,” Steve tried. “I was back there again.”

Bucky reached down and grasped Steve’s hand. There was a small smirk as Steve grasped back and let Bucky squeeze tight. He was still looking at the floor, though, apparently finding the tips of his Converse very fascinating.

“I wouldn’t love being in a room like that if I’d been through what you have, either,” Bucky said.

“I chose to trust her,” Steve said. “I shouldn’t have been freaking out.”

“Okay, Steve. We have to have a talk about that word.”

“What word?”

“Should. It’s _verboten_ from now on. I hear you ‘should’ on yourself, I get one good whack on the arm.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m pretty serious.”

“But I really should have—”

True to his word, Bucky thwacked him, gently, on the upper arm. It was such a poor effort that Steve actually smiled, rubbing his arm almost from the tickle of it than anything else.

“I’ll have you trained in no time,” Bucky said.

Steve laughed, a rattle in his nose. “You know I don’t like doing what I’m told.”

“Too true.”

“But it’s you, so maybe I’ll make an exception.”

“If I recall right, _you’re_ the bossy one.”

Steve must have caught the allusion to the other night because he went a little pink, but all the same, a smarmy look came over his face as his brow cocked.

“Yeah, but you like that about me,” he reminded him.

Bucky ran his hand over his mouth, but it did nothing to hide his smile.

Quiet gathered in the car again. Steve’s melancholy came back again and Bucky leaned in. He could tell something had curved back into the forefront of his mind, he was just trying to find the words.

“What is it?” Bucky whispered.

“For the first time in a long time,” Steve said. “I’m starting to think about what the other side of this looks like. Maybe for the first time. It’s almost like I don’t remember my life before HYDRA. We’re so close to cracking this, but what do we do _after_?”

Bucky sat back in his seat. It was a heavy, heady question, and Bucky wished to hell he had some kind of answer for Steve. He didn’t want to say, “I don’t know,” not to that. Though the truth was that the shrug he gave said everything.

“You gotta think about now,” Bucky said. “Only thing that’s guaranteed.”

From Steve’s soft, sad smile, Bucky could tell it hadn’t been what Steve had wanted to hear.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “What do you _want_ the future to be?”

Steve was a deer in headlights. Maybe that hadn’t been the best thing to have said in that moment, but it had at least elicited a reaction.

“I’ve never really sat down and thought about it,” Steve said.

There was a tremor in his voice. Bucky could only grab him by the shoulder and rub it, pulling his hand back and forth.

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted. “I’m so close to having my life back and I don’t even know what to _do_ with it.”

“Why you gotta _do_ something with it?” Bucky said.

“Because I should—”

Bucky thwacked him lightly on the arm and Steve jumped, having to chew on the self-deprecatory laugh that threatened to break out.

“Because I sh—because by now most people know what they want to be when they grow up.”

“I don’t.”

Steve gave Bucky a sideways glare. “You’re a detective.”

“And I was a cop, and that didn’t work, and maybe I’ll retire after this job and take up carpentry. I don’t know.”

“But what about...”

“What about what?”

“Us.”

That made Bucky reel back a little. “What… what about us?”

“What are we going to do after this?” Steve asked. “You and me.”

Bucky realized Steve wasn’t talking about mortal peril. Suddenly, Bucky was sharing Steve’s anxiety about the future. He couldn’t see the other side of the case, either. He didn’t know what the two of them would look like when it all broke open, when, and if, justice prevailed.

There it was again, the image from the warehouse. Steve’s threat to Rumlow. That he could disappear again at a moments notice. That he had before, could again. Imagining another big, blank spot in his life without Steve caused such an ache in his heart that he felt something press at the back of his eyes and he had to get a handle on himself.

It was at that moment that the phone in his jeans pocket vibrated, startling him. He didn’t want to answer it. The moment had been fragile and Bucky wanted it back. But as he patted his jeans down he realized he wanted something to stay in tact which had already broken, Steve going back into himself. Steve looked at the phone, expectantly, knowing it could only have something to do with the case.

Bucky looked at the screen. Sam. He definitely had to answer it.

“ _We’ve got Zola in custody_ ,” Sam told him.

“The statement was eough for a warrant?” Bucky asked.

“ _No telling if the statement will hold up in court, but the judge figured it was enough to make the arrest._ ”

“What do you need from me?”

“ _Steve said he placed him. Maybe you and him could stop by to watch the show._ ”

“Sharon gonna grill him?”

“ _You haven’t seen the woman work. If Steve feeds us information as it goes along, she’s going to serve him up for the fourth of July picnic._ ”

#

Steve’s hands shook, as if he were getting ready to pole-vault or lift weights. His cheeks puffed as he breathed out. Bucky raised his brow.

“You okay, buddy?” Bucky said.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Steve said. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Steve continued to shift, and Bucky wanted to laugh, but he kept it to himself. He wasn’t sure what was getting under his skin, but he chalked it up to the fact that he was in the middle of a police station, in a small, windowless room. Even without being in trouble, the atmosphere tended to be oppressive.

“I thought there’d be mirrors,” Steve said.

The monitor showed four angles of an empty interrogation room, the video feed better than Bucky remembered it—it had been upgraded, digital cameras no longer grainy and the image crisper. It was coming from cameras positioned on the upper corners of the room, waiting to record.

“Perps notice the mirrors,” Bucky said.

Sam came into the room and the first thing he did was clap Steve on the shoulder. There it was, the little jump that Steve had developed at the feel of sudden touch. If Sam noticed it he covered for it with another slap on the back.

“You ready for this?” Sam asked.

“I think so,” Steve said. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Sharon’s got an earpiece—small, he won’t be able to see it. We’re going to listen to her talk to Zola, and if anything sparks, just speak up. We might be able to use it. Got it?”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“Alright. Let’s get started.”

Steve visibly tensed when Zola was led into the room. Bucky peered at him, but Steve didn’t notice. He was fixated on the screen. There was that firm determination again, like that of an athlete.

Zola sat by himself, fidgeting with his fingers and looking at the door, expectant. He wasn’t handcuffed. Someone like Zola, someone unlikely to be a physical threat, wouldn’t be handcuffed. It also put in their heads that if they weren’t handcuffed, they must not be in all that much trouble. Their goal was to put him at ease, not to intimidate.

Sharon walked in with a file folder casually in her hands and nodded to Zola, who sat up expectantly. She sat down with all the casualness in the world, folding her hands delicately over her crossed knee.

“Dr. Zola,” Sharon started. “I’m Detective Carter. Before we start, do you understand that you have been read your rights and you’re here under suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder?”

“Yes, I have been read my rights, but as to the murder I can only confess I can’t imagine why I would be accused of something like that.”

Bucky tried to pay attention to Sharon, but he was only paying attention to Steve. He was shaking around the edges. His mind was cast back to the gun club, days before. Sam had said then that Steve was shaking around the edges, but Bucky hadn’t seen it then. He saw it there in that room, and wondered why he hadn’t seen that vibration before, or why it had taken him so long to see it.

Without a word, Steve headed to the door. Sam looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky, his face an open question. That feeling, the constant _something is very wrong_ feeling rose up in Bucky as he watched Steve leave. He followed Steve out.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked.

“Gimme a second,” Bucky said, following Steve into the hall.

Steve had his hands on his knees like he had just run a mile and was winded, desperate to keep his breath. His elbows and his shoulders shook slightly under the weight of keeping himself up.

“Are you getting sick again?” Bucky asked. “You gotta let me know if you are, buddy, or I can’t help you.”

“That’s not—”

A silence filled the empty hallway and Bucky came closer, arching over Steve like an umbrella, trying to peer into hidden eyes.

“You’re kinda freaking me out here,” Bucky said, only some of his joking manner getting through his genuine unease.

Eventually, Steve lifted his head. He pressed his back to the wall, then hit the crown of his head against it and stared up into the fluorescent lights.

“This is so much harder than I thought it would be,” Steve said.

“He’s the guy responsible for Erskine’s death,” Bucky said. “Moreso even than Rumlow. This is hard. You don’t gotta feel bad about it.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it, man? We can’t leave Sam to just—”

“That’s him. It was him.”

“Him? Him who?”

Bucky was at a loss until Steve finally looked him in the eyes. There was a desperate plea not to have to spell it out for him, to let the unutterable thing stay fettered away. And then it crashed into Bucky like a train and for a moment his vision was red.

Rage was the first thing that Bucky felt. He was there, Zola, right around the corner in a little box, nowhere to escape to. He pictured taking his gun out, knocking the door in and emptying the magazine into the sick, little man. Except his gun was down in his Golf, locked inside his glove compartment, and he was surrounded by police.

The violent side-step into fantasy disappeared in the second it existed, leaving Bucky feeling hollow and stunned. There was just the cold in the hallway, the prickle of new sweat all over his body and Steve casting his gaze aside when he finally knew that Bucky had put the pieces together.

“H-he—,” Bucky began, but he had to take a moment to collect his voice. “He was the one?”

Steve could only purse his lips and nod. Bucky ran his hand through his hair as the stress in his body mounted. He realized he wanted to punch a wall, but wasn’t all that keen on wearing a cast on the other arm, too, because he would have punched hard and forgotten himself and broken something in his hand.

“I should have told you,” Steve said. “I didn’t think I’d be this…”

Whatever word Steve was about to say escaped him.

“I’m not mad at you,” Bucky said. “Christ, I could never be mad at you. Not about this. Steve, you gotta know that. I will never be mad at you for anything about this.”

Steve’s eyes were still hollow, but he nodded all the same, trying to accept that Bucky was telling him the truth.

Sam chose that moment to come out of the viewing room and into the hall. He looked peeved, but not so much that he was actively angry. He stared at them out of curiosity, more than anything.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked.

“You gotta give us a minute,” Bucky said.

“No,” Steve said, voice shaking. “I can do this.”

“Steve, you gotta take a minute.”

“ _I can do this_.”

Steve smoothed his hair back and tugged on the collar of his new hoodie, disappearing further into the comfort of it. Bucky watched a steely resolve work its way into Steve’s face. It wasn’t that he was prepared all of a sudden, but that half of him had disappeared behind some opaque veil. The person standing in front of him was still vibrating around the edges, just under a layer of armor.

Steve walked back into the room with Sam and Bucky, shoulders set, jaw tight and square. Sharon was still in the introductory stages of the interrogation. They hadn’t missed much. Their body language was still loose and conversational, both feeling each other out, testing boundaries and easing into the conversation.

“You’re a pretty intelligent man, doctor,” Sharon said. “You can put this together.”

“I assure you,” Zola said. “There’s nothing that I would like to do more, but I am at a loss.”

“Then let me put it together for you. We have correspondences between you and a user with the handle “Crossbones” in a dark web forum for two separate jobs.”

“Jobs? What jobs?”

“Hit jobs. As in you paid to have a man killed.”

Sharon slide the print-outs of the direct message interactions towards Zola.

“This is not me,” Zola said. “My interactions with the internet start and end with my email and shopping.”

“You expect me to believe you’re not smart enough to mask your IP address and use a VPN to get access to proxy servers? Anybody with the ability to Google can figure that out. You’ve got a pretty nice computer, doctor. Pretty state-of-the-art. Lots of good security parameters.”

“If you’re trying to find a way into my computer, you’d need my express permission.”

“Well, that’s the thing about doing custom work on your laptop’s operating system. There’s a lot of things that get disabled. Like all those fancy bells-and-whistles security features you bought it for. We have a couple of guys in the lab who were pretty interested as to why you’d be locking your personal computer up like that.”

“To answer your question: it is _not_ a personal computer. It’s my work computer. There are corporate documents on it that aren’t for the public eye. Hackers are a chief concern of my employer’s, I’ve been very careful.”

Sharon laughed. “Boy, have you. They can’t quite crack into it.”

“You don’t have the right—”

“The warrant a judge signed for your arrest says I absolutely do. I hope either you’re not the man we’re after or that your bosses are understanding, because—what, was it, Triskelion? —they’ll be none too happy that their company property is wrapped up in a murder investigation.”

“They might have a warrant to seize my computer, but there’s no way you can force me to unlock it, nor can you force Triskelion to aid you in breaking into our proprietary security technology.”

“Right, that technology, the one that you compromised so that you could go unseen into the dark web? That technology?

Zola squirmed, his face wriggling around the point of his nose. Bucky hated the way he moved. He was more liquid than man, and if he didn’t know exactly what Zola was, the sickness that roiled just under the skin, he would still have the creeps. Something was wrong with the man, deeply wrong. From Sharon’s body language, she could see it, and was directing her attacks on that diseased pit in the center of him, and the man didn’t even know it.

“Okay,” Sharon said. “Let’s start over. Things are getting a little hostile, and I don’t think that helps anybody.”

Zola leaned back, a wry smile curving up his face. “No, of course not.”

“It’s not my job to just bully you into submission. It is my job to get to the truth. We’re not going to get there with baseless accusations and psychological traps. You’re too smart for those, anyway.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere, either.”

“I wouldn’t presume to flatter you.”

Zola sneered. He wasn’t sure what to make of that statement. Bucky repressed his own face, which wanted to twitch up into a smirk.

Steve stepped forward and caught Sam’s attention.

“Keep doing that,” Steve said. “He’s suspicious of anything like flattery. If you’re nice to him when you should hate him, he gets suspicious. He also gets angry. Kinda violent, too, so watch out.”

Sam relayed the message to Sharon and from her slight nod, she had heard it in her ear. She rounded back on Zola, leaning across the table, her hands crossed patiently over each other. Zola reeled back and his eyes flicked over her, a look of disgust and mistrust on his face. Steve had been right. It was unsettling him. From the way she was looking at him, it was clear Sharon was about to back him into a corner.

“I think you’re right,” Sharon said. “I think you’re too smart to leave a backdoor open for us. An intelligent guy like you wouldn’t use the internet for anything dirty. The internet is written in ink. Everything posted or sent or downloaded gets logged somewhere. You know that. Don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then let’s clear up this misunderstanding. Dr. Erskine was a colleague of yours, at one time, wasn’t he?”

“We worked together briefly at another employer of mine. I’ve moved on since then. Our paths haven’t crossed again.”

“So that would mean this investigation and your arrest for his murder is the first time you’re hearing about his passing?”

“I’m sad to hear that Abraham met such a fate, but why you think _I_ would have anything to do with it? Especially in such a manner—”

“I don’t think you would have done anything as intentionally cruel as order what happened to Dr. Erskine.”

Sharon opened the folder that had been sitting on the table in between them. She fanned out the pictures inside, and even without the vantage point he had, Bucky knew what the pictures would be of.

Everybody watched Zola for his reaction to the crime scene photos. It would be telling. Whether or not he knew what kind of man he had hired, or if it was the exact kind of retribution he had wanted, might reveal itself I the next few moments.

Zola reeled back, as if shown something distasteful. Not death, not something violent, just distasteful. It put a lump in Bucky’s throat. He turned his eyes to the side and saw Steve reeled back, eyes furrowed, as if confused by the way Zola was reacting. Maybe Steve was considering that he would see something different.

“There’s no need for that,” Zola said, face sneering.

“I just thought you’d like to know the severity of the situation,” Sharon said. She leaned in, her arm on the table. “Because you see, the man that did that is in a coma right now, but the doctors say that he had a pretty solid chance of coming out of this.”

“And that is my concern, why?”

Steve leaned toward Sam. “Ask him what job he did with Doctor Erskine.”

Sam spoke into the mic. “Needle him about the job he had while working with Doctor Erskine.”

“You and Erskine worked together,” Sharon said. “Doing what, exactly?”

“It was so long ago,” Zola said, his posture becoming more wooden.

“I know, old jobs. Sometimes you wish you could forget them wholesale. It must have been pretty mundane stuff, if you couldn’t remember.”

“I simply cannot discuss it.”

“Well, that’s very bad for you.”

“Why?”

“Because my thinking is that whatever got Erskine killed probably had to do with the research you were both doing at…what was it called…?”

Steve was quick, speaking into the mic. “Red Room.”

“Red Room,” Sharon parroted.

“Anything we did for that company is sealed in their private corporate records,” Zola explained, as if to a child.

“Yeah, funny thing about that,” Sharon said. “Private corporate records aren’t so private anymore. Lots of things can happen. Leaks, hacks, or just plain incompetence in some department. Who knows what we might have found out.”

Zola sneered. He squirmed in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. It was then that Bucky noticed that he hadn’t been looking at Sharon, not really. It had been cursory glances. Before, he had been dismissing her. Now he was really giving her his attention.

Steve came forward again, his eyes sharpening as they went wider. “Bring up Subject 21. Pretend you know who that is.”

Sharon nodded her head, as if thinking, smirking, but if Bucky wasn’t mistaken there was a tinge of annoyance in her face before she suppressed it.

“You moved around a lot,” Sharon said. “Company to company. First the Red Room, then something called Tesseract. Then Tesseract was absorbed into another company in the merger that made Triskelion, your current employer. But Erskine didn’t follow the same career path.”

“I suppose not,” Zola agreed.

“Did the two of you have disagreements about your work?”

“We did not work as closely as you might think.”

“But did he know about Subject 21?”

Zola went stock-still. Sharon, and everybody in the observation room, went still as well, waiting for Zola’s response.

“I don’t know what that is,” Zola said.

It wasn’t a perfect lie. He was smiling, slight, his eyebrows raised in a soft arch. Sharon, in turn, was a stone wall. She gave nothing to him, face even and unforgiving. At the sight of her resolve, his own face crumbled a bit. A thrill went through Bucky as he recognized the sight of panic. For the first time, Zola didn’t have control of the shape of the conversation.

Sharon’s face broke out into one of derision, like a teacher disappointed in her favorite student. The nod in her head was slight and Zola furrowed his brow. She raised a brow and shook her head.

“You know,” Sharon said. “This is disappointing. All I’m trying to do is make it easier for you, and you’re just not helping yourself.”

“Where did you hear of such a thing?”

“We found everything. You think we wouldn’t? You didn’t do that good of a job covering up your tracks. What happen? Erskine find out about your little project?”

Sharon was doing good with her bluff. Zola was panicking, seeming to want to run from the room, leaning back in his chair. Bucky didn’t know if her inference was even a little bit close. He realized that she was on to something that he hadn’t even considered. Subject 21 might not have been a random encounter in that abandoned basement.

Bucky’s blood spiked. He turned to Steve, just to see if there had been another one of those omissions, another addition to the ever-growing list of things Steve had played close to his chest. No such thing. Steve was as surprised as he was that there was a connection. It had been a guess.

“So, you are trying to call me a murderer on two counts?” Zola spat. “Try your worst.”

Sharon narrowed her eyes. “I never said you were the one who killed Subject 21. That’s an interesting leap to make, doctor.”

Zola, caught, swallowed hard again. With a shaking hand, he took off his glasses and began worrying the glass with the edge of his shirt. He sighed and then laughed. It was nervous and lacked confidence. Zola had meant it to be dismissive. Even he hadn’t believed the cover-up.

“This is all absurd,” Zola stated.

“This goes a lot easier,” Sharon said. “When you don’t treat the police like they’re stupid. I might not have a PhD, but I’ve been around the block a few times. I know your type. You’re going to sing for me, Dr. Zola.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because Rumlow just came out of his coma. We’ve spoken to him, and he’s ready to testify against you in order to reduce his _considerable_ sentence.”

“I told you, I never heard of—”

“And it’s only a matter of time before forensics connects something you left at the scene.”

Steve jumped and leaned into the microphone. “Fire. Ask him about the fire.”

“Burning a body doesn’t completely erase evidence,” Sharon said, quickly using Steve’s information.

Whether or not Sharon was sweating under the stress of the new information, she wasn’t showing it. Inside the interrogation room, she was still completely cool and in control. The same couldn’t be said for the energy in the observation room. Sam glared over at Bucky, who gave him an apologetic stare.

“I’ll explain when this is all done,” Bucky promised.

“Or you could explain it now,” Sam said.

Their attention was brought back to the interrogation room, as Sharon rounded on him completely, no longer casual in her body language.

“What happen?” Sharon asked. “Erskine come across your little project and you had to take him out before he tattled on your boss? What, were you using company resources for something off the books?”

Zola was sweating, squirming. Bucky leaned in closer to the monitor. The man wasn’t worried about the murder of Erskine anymore—never had been. This was his real secret. He had tried to scorch his victim from the earth but the bones had risen up from the ashes.

Bucky locked eyes with Sam, nodded.

“Keep pushing,” Sam told Sharon. “You almost got him.”

“If your old coworker Abraham found out,” Sharon said. “It’s only a matter of time before we put it together. We’re good at this stuff. And we’ll be liaisoning with the feds. They’ve got the fancy stuff. The DNA spectrometers, the carbon tests to see exactly how long ago you burned the body.”

“This isn’t science fiction,” Zola said with an uncomfortable sneer. “You can’t prosecute me with this information.”

Sharon stood up, gathering the pictures back into the file folder. She stood up, tall frame looming over him, casting a shadow on him in the harsh lights. Zola reeled back, as if fearing sudden violence.

“Wait here,” Sharon said.

Her voice had been sharp, as if commanding a naughty student. Zola reeled, adjusting his glasses on his face, making himself small. Sharon disappeared out of the door and it sealed shut with a slam and a click.

Sharon reappeared in the observation room, her arms wide. “What the hell?” she snapped. “There’s another body now? Since when?”

“I’m oddly curious about that, too,” Sam said, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.

“We were tresspassing,” Bucky said. “And I had to keep it close to my chest. If he knew we knew about the crime scene, he’d move the evidence, or torch the whole place.”

“But you could have told us,” Sam said.

“Plausible deniability?” Steve said, shrugging slightly.

Sharon rolled her eyes before pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Is there anything else I don’t know?” Sharon asked.

“That’s everything,” Bucky said. “I didn’t even think to connect Subject 21 and Erskine’s death to Zola.”

“And you have no idea who Subject 21 is?”

Bucky pulled out his phone. He had taken a picture of the piece of paper that he’d found and showed it to Sharon. She studied it, eyes sharp. Handing it back to Bucky, he knew she’d memorized all the text.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked her.

“I think your man Erskine found out about Subject 21,” Sharon said. “And that’s what got him killed.”

Steve looked indignant. “What about the experiments?” he said. “What about the fact that he was going after Triskelion?”

“Why would _Zola_ be the one to do it then, and with a hitman like Crossbones? If it were someone looking to get rid of someone because of corporate espionage, there are a hundred ways that can be done. They can go after him with lawyers, pay him off, slap him with blackmail. The last resort would be to go into the dark web. Triskelion didn’t do this. Zola did. And if Erskine found out about Zola killing Subject 21, then _boom_ , you got motive.”

Bucky and Steve stood in stunned silence for a while as they absorbed the information.

“Damn,” Bucky said, turning to Sam. “You said she was good.”

“I’m pretty good,” Sharon confirmed, her head tilting with confidence.

“We’ve got him scared,” Sam said. “If we can get him to cop to even knowing about Subject 21, we can get something about Triskelion out of him. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet. He still thinks he can outsmart us. Don’t let him know we’ve got him until he’s slipped up. He’ll lawyer up fast.”

Sharon nodded and left the room, reappearing a few moments later on their screens. Sharon sat down across from Zola again, her face pensive and annoyed. She let silence hang over the pair of them, Zola putting on a defiant face, but remaining wholly transparent in his inability to hide his fear. There was pride, too, and Bucky saw that she had been right. Zola wanted to be smarter than Sharon, and the police as a whole. Problem was, that he was the wrong kind of smart. Just because he knew a genome in and out he could outsmart a seasoned detective.

Bucky was looking forward to watching it backfire on him.

“How did Erskine find out that you had killed someone?” Sharon asked, blunt.

Zola reeled back, blinking rapidly. “I told you, I’ve never heard of this Rumlow.”

“No. I’m talking about Subject 21. You killed him _personally_. And when Erskine found out about it, you decided to pay someone to have him killed. Except you weren’t expecting to come across someone so messy, and so self-preserving. Rumlow knew what you did, too. He’ll testify to that fact. He did a lot of research on you, actually, just in case you were the kind of guy to roll over on _him_. We know an awful lot about you now, doctor.”

Sharon had set the bait. It was risky. A smart man, someone really smart, would ask for their lawyer then and there. Sharon was betting that he was dumb enough to show off how smart he was.

“How do you know I killed Subject 21 in the first place?” Zola asked. “You don’t even know who he is. How do you know I’m the one who murdered him.”

“I didn’t say we knew,” Sharon said. “I’m saying Erskine knew. You think he didn’t leave something behind to lead us to you? You think he didn’t account for the possibility of retribution?”

“Like what?”

“Like the location of the body in the first place. Like the trail he left leading to you. You’re a smart man. You know we’ve put it all together. How do you think we managed that?”

Zola laughed, but his nerves made it shake around the edges. “I know this isn’t television, detective. I know you don’t have anything legally binding, or you wouldn’t be interrogating me.”

“What I’m doing is a _kindess_. I don’t think you’ll do very well in Sing Sing. We _want you_ to have better accommodations. That way, you’ll have a better chance at staying alive and helping us.”

“Helping you with what?”

Sharon leaned over the table. Her manner made Zola all the more uncomfortable.

“It’s your bosses or you,” Sharon said. “What’s it going to be?”

Sam slammed his fist on the table. “She got him.”

It was miraculous, watching it all tumble out of Zola’s mouth. He gave it all up as if in explanation why he _shouldn’t_ be going to jail. That Subject 21 was a failed experiment, that he was forced to do it on behalf of the subject, a man named Johann Schmidt. Steve watched in shock as he explained that it wasn’t Triskelion’s secrets he’d killed Erskine to keep—it was his own.

Bucky watched as Steve’s breaths became shallower. Confused, his eyes were darting around as the full brunt of what he was witnessing begun to hit him. Bucky knew what was coming next. He found Sam’s eyes and began to plead.

“Sam, give us the room,” Bucky said.

“Bucky?” Sam asked.

“I really need the room.”

Sam nodded, giving a short, worried glance at Steve before walking out, closing the door behind him with a gentle click.

Steve breathed in like he’d just come up for air, his spine curving as he collapsed forward to grab the edge of the table. Bucky came up and wrapped his arms around his torso, pressing his cheek into his back.

“We got him,” Bucky said. “Steve, we got him. You did so good.”

“I can’t breathe,” Steve said. “Why can’t I breathe?”

“You can breathe. You can breathe. Listen to me…”

“It wasn’t even about HYRDA. That’s not even why he had Erskine killed. I thought I knew…”

Bucky counted the in and out breaths, helping Steve to sit down and regulate. Once sat in the chair, Steve stared up at the ceiling, eyes wet and fluttering, going red but refusing to let himself break. Bucky wished he would. He wished Steve would stop fighting just this one thing and find some relief. He deserved that much, Bucky thought. For some of it to empty out and stop plaguing him. But as he breathed he calmed down, though his hand was shaking as it grasped Bucky’s.

“Squeeze my hand,” Bucky said. “Like when we were kids. When I wanted to know how bad it hurt.”

Steve squeezed hard enough that Bucky flinched and bit down, but really Steve only had strength enough for the one, hard grip. But it was hard, a pinching, crushing squeeze.

Bucky pressed his forehead against the back of Steve’s hand, reaching a hand up to rub his arm in long, comforting strokes.

“You don’t have to be alone on this,” Bucky said.

Steve could only nod his head. He came down by degrees, the shaking in his outline diminishing, his grip relaxing, and his face cooling. He still found himself unable to let go of Steve’s hand, even as he squirmed a little bit, Steve’s fingers lacing and unlacing around Bucky’s.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I keep thinking…”

“What?” Bucky asked after Steve let silence hang.

“I keep thinking that if I keep it all close to my chest, you’ll stay safe. It hasn’t been working.”

Steve let go of Bucky’s hand and reached up to caress Bucky’s temple, at the new bandage covering where Rumlow’s bullet had grazed him. Bucky closed his eyes at the touch, like a cat being caressed. When he opened his eyes again he was captured by the magnetism in those blue eyes.

“Lemme worry about staying safe,” Bucky said.

“Well, you haven’t been doing _great_ at it,” Steve said. “One of us has to.”

Bucky’s laugh was self-deprecatory, wry. “Yeah, I’m collecting a few souvenirs, but that’s got nothing to do with you.” I mean, you’re not the one hiring the serial killer.”

“Still. I don’t feel great about it.”

“Steve, you got the brunt of this for _five years_. You got plenty.”

Steve had to nod, giving himself that much due credit. He took his hand away from Bucky’s face and stared down at it. It was still shaking, but down to a small tremor, and could be controlled by Steve making a steadier fist. He flexed his hand open and closed and settled back into himself.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said, moving his head so they were holding each other’s gaze again.

“Hmm?” Steve mumbled.

“ _We got him_.”

Steve’s face broke out into a smile. He laughed, and there was so little bitterness in it, it was like a miracle. He had something genuine to be happy about.

They’d got him. Erskine’s killer was going to go to jail, for a very long time. They had a confession, and damning evidence. All it had taken was a little leverage and Sharon’s tactics and he’s broken open like a piñata. Bucky thrilled to remember it, and it was a memory that would keep him warm in difficult winters. Zola, once stripped bare of authority and pressed with questions became about as water-tight as a sieve.

There was still a trial to go, and a case to build, but it was happening. The idea that Zola would be free of every charge was impossible to imagine. If he weren’t going to jail for murder on one count, it would be on another. If for neither of those, then what was on his computer would give him ten years, at the very least. And as for whether or not Zola would even survive prison…well, that was something he’d leave up to Zola’s survival skills.


	16. Chapter 16

Despite everything, Sam didn’t look happy. Bucky had been so wrapped up in taking care of Steve, he hadn’t let himself see the bigger picture. Then it all came to him, the reality of the situation. Sam had his arms crossed. It was the risk they took, bringing up Subject 21. He wished he’d given Sam some fore-warning, but it had all happened so fast that they had to take the opportunity. Now there was the uncertainty of what came next.

“FBI is already sending someone,” Sam said.

Bucky nodded. “Sam, I’m sorry.”

“You could have said something about it. You found a body, for Christ’s sake.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Yeah, but the FBI, with all their resources and technology? They damn well might.”

“Not that I’d know, but there’s no security footage and they won’t find my footprints or fingerprint down there. Not Steve’s either. We’ll be okay.”

“Yeah you keep saying that, but you’ve got seven stitches and a broken arm. You understand this means I can’t help you anymore. You, or Steve. The case isn’t going to be ours anymore.”

“We’ll roll with it. Whatever comes.”

“That’s a nice sentiment Barnes, but for every second I have to spend with a Fed, I’m plotting your eventual demise.”

“That…that’s fair.”

The relationship between agencies in law enforcement could be _strained_ , so say the least, when cases went from local to federal. There was no telling what this agent would be like—some bureaucrat hoping to use it to further his political career, or some bureaucrat who won’t care because it won’t further his political career. Bucky would have to brace for whatever eventuality.

“When’s the guy coming down from the bureau?” Bucky asked.

“Sometime this afternoon,” Sam said. “Don’t know a name or anything yet. I guess they’re not even sure who they’re sending yet.”

“Sounds organized.”

“Like usual.”

“Look, Sam, Steve is not in great shape. We’ve gotta go, decompress. But let me know the moment the Fed shows up. I gotta get a feel for the guy, at least. Then I can offer my services. Stay close that way, so I don’t have to keep trying to get you to spy for me.”

“That’s good, because there’s only so much of that I have left in me.”

Bucky clapped Sam on the shoulder and some of the tension dissipated. Sam chuckled and shook his head.

“You know,” Sam said. “I thought you’d be _less_ trouble when you were out of my hair as a cop.”

“Come on man,” Bucky said. “It’s not like I’m _trying_ to attract murder conspiracies. They just happen.”

“Right. Look, take the kid and get out of here. He really looks like he could use a lie-down.”

Bucky turned and saw Steve sitting in a chair down the hallway. He was curled over his legs, fingers in his mouth, chewing on the flesh around his nails. His legs were bouncing and he scanned the room constantly. Bucky knew he was expecting to see Zola being led around by a cop and, if Bucky were totally honest, that was a real possibility and not something he wanted to see Steve exposed to.

Bucky let his gaze linger on Steve while he looked down on the linoleum, caught up in his own thoughts. He finally got what Sam had said about Steve shaking around the edges, like an old car with a little bit of rattle in it. All Bucky wanted to do was find and fix where the fault was, to smooth the path that Steve was about to take.

#

Steve’s rattling was more pronounced in the hotel room. He didn’t say anything when they were finally in private, choosing instead to sit on the edge of the bed and unlace his shoes without a word. Bucky gave him his space, going back to their diagram on the wall, scanning it for Zola’s presence. He didn’t want that face or name to be staring back at them from any of the documents. He gathered files under the guise of organizing, but he was still looking for Zola’s face haunting them.

He found their only picture of him. It was the grainy telephoto lens image that Steve had picked out of a lineup. He glanced over his shoulder for less than a second to make sure Steve was still contemplating his feet before removing it and slipping it into his own briefcase, where Steve wasn’t liable to look. That being the only image they had of the sick little man, Bucky cleaned in earnest, the tidiness of the paperwork giving the room a new harmony.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.

It had come from out of nowhere. Bucky froze, unsure of what the next move ought to be. He shifted the piles of paper on the desk, giving himself time to think.

When he turned back around, Steve was almost meeting his eye. His gaze was hovering somewhere around Bucky’s collarbone. He looked hollow and exhausted, like he’d just ran a mile.

Attempting to meet Steve’s eye, Bucky tried to draw him out. "Whatever you’re about to apologize for—”

“Please,” Steve begged. “Let me say this.”

Bucky found himself clasping his arms across his chest, leaning back into the desk and waiting for Steve to continue. Steve licked his lips and several times took little inhales as if ready to speak. Time and time again he gave up and chewed on his thoughts again.

“I’m sorry that I have such a hard time trusting you with things,” Steve finally said. “I know I can trust you, I know that, but maybe I’m just—I barely remember what it feels like to have someone in my life I can feel safe with. I do feel safe with you. I do. My brain just hasn’t caught up. Not all the way.”

Languidly, Bucky unspooled his arms from around his chest and pushed off from the desk. He could see Steve tighten up visibly when he sat down next to him on the bed. Bucky laid his forehead on Steve’s bony shoulder, letting his own hair fall into his face. Steve relaxed and reached for him. He grasped Bucky’s cast and pulled it onto his lap. Again, he smoothed his hands over the porous, bandage-wrapped plaster that held his fractured bone together.

“I should have stayed hidden,” Steve said. “Everybody’s getting hurt ‘cause of me.”

“Steve,” Bucky admonished. “No. You put a rapist and a killer behind bars today. You did so good. I’m so proud of you.”

Steve cringed, balling up a little bit. The direct praise seemed to be too much for him. He shied away from it like a pill bug away from touch.

“I’m not exactly a hero,” Steve said.

“To whoever he’s not visiting tonight, you will be,” Bucky reminded him.

Steve’s body tensed, but his grip around Bucky’s cast remained soft. Regret rolled into Bucky like wind ushering in broiling clouds. He wished to god he had been Steve’s hero. He wished again that he had pushed past all the people telling him to leave it alone and found Steve on some dark night when the last thing he was expecting was salvation. He spoke none of that aloud. Steve didn’t need the weight of it.

Steve brought up Bucky’s left hand and kissed the knuckles that peeked out from under the cast. There were still cuts, on both hands, from his fight with Rumlow. Bucky wondered if Steve meant for it to make it all better.

Bucky took his arm away and wound it around Steve’s waist, pulling him close to be flush with his side. He laid his forehead on Steve’s shoulder again and they sat in silence as the sound of the city hummed outside with constant, familiar comfort.

“I worked at a McDonalds,” Steve said.

“What?” Bucky said, brows pinching as he tried to understand the non-sequitor.

“Before I moved in with Erskine, that’s what I did for a year. Me, Natasha, and Pietro had a squat and we all worked fast food jobs for money. We had fake names and fake IDs. That’s just what we did. We made enough to eat and stole electricity. I could have been doing anything else, but I thought—if I can just survive until tomorrow, that’s when I bring them down. That’s when I stop them. But I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I was fired twice ‘cause of it.”

“Twice?” Bucky said, his laugh soft.

“Yeah. But the assistant manager liked me enough that I got it back twice.”

“See, I told you people like you when you let ‘em.”

Steve’s nasal laugh was genuine. “If you say so.”

“What changed?”

“You mean why did things change?”

“Yeah.”

“Natasha. After she died looking into HYDRA, I couldn’t stay in the squat anymore. Not even for Pietro. I had Erskine’s number. He told me to call if I ever needed him and I needed to get back up, to start fighting again. I just underestimated how long it would take me to get back up again.”

“Steve—”

“I need help.”

Something unspooled inside of Bucky’s chest, something he hadn’t even noticed was wound around him with glassy wire.

“I don’t know what to call it,” Steve continued. “I haven’t been dealing with whatever it is. I thought I was dealing with it when I was with Erskine, but it was a year of just existing, hiding away in that room and coming out to eat with the doc at the kitchen table. I should have gotten a different kind of doctor. And I should have called you before I needed your help. Bucky, I just—I’m tired of being like this. I can’t do it anymore.”

Bucky felt lighter than he had for days. Steve was asking for _help_. Which meant Bucky could finally, actually, give it to him, without hesitation or reproach. Bucky pressed his forehead harder against Steve’s shoulder, reaching up with his right hand and sliding it into Steve’s. Steve grasped Bucky’s hand in return in a hard, desperate grip with long, clever fingers.

Bucky had never seen anybody so monumentally _tired_. When Steve’s face finally broke it was inevitable, but alien. He could count the number of times Steve had cried openly in front of him on one hand—not wanting to leave the day he was to meet with his foster parents, and when his mother died, two such occasions. In that moment, in the quiet, intimate space of the hotel room, Steve seemed to be making up for all the times he’d had to be brave, to get up when it would be easier to stay down, to face a day he didn’t want to face. It wasn’t a howling fit—it was terribly quiet, long silences and shaking shoulders interrupted by hitching breaths. Steve hid the rest of it in his hand and, a moment later, in Bucky’s chest. Bucky let himself be whatever Steve needed—a wall, a silent presence, a strong arm around his body. It went on until Steve was one curving shape collapsing, boneless, against Bucky’s body. Bucky combed his fingers through Steve’s hair, breathing in the smell of hotel soap and skin.

The phone on the desk vibrated, breaking the stillness in the air.

“You gotta get that,” Steve said.

“No,” Bucky said. “I don’t.”

#

Steve’s head was sunk into a pillow, heavy with sleep. Bucky had only just extricated himself from Steve’s arms, careful not to wake him up. It didn’t look like anything would get him up for a while, and Bucky was willing to let him get as much rest as he could. He snuck around the room, trying to find something to work on quietly. Then he remembered that his phone had rung.

He expected to see Sam’s number, but he balked at the unknown caller. It wasn’t the time for new clients, but he never knew what it might be about. Though not in the mood to entertain anything irrelevant, he had made a vow, ever since becoming a PI, that he would always answer his phone.

He snuck out into the hall and called the number back, walking to the end of the hall near the ice machine so he wouldn’t disturb his neighbors. The phone rang for so long, he was sure it was going to go to voicemail, or that there was no voicemail set up at all.

There was a click and then a cranky, “It’s about time.”

“Sorry, I—,” Bucky began.

“This is the detective? James, yes?”

“Who is this?”

“Pietro.”

Bucky straightened up. “Pietro? I’m sorry I didn’t pick up I was—”

“Nevermind what you were doing. It’s almost too late.”

“Too late? Pietro, did something happen?”

“My location is burned, is what happened. No thanks to that son-of-a-bitch journalist.”

A sickly taste rose in Bucky’s mouth as worry cramped his stomach. “Burned? What do you mean, ‘burned?’ Does Triskelion know where you are?”

“Not now. But that’s not what this is about. I have some information you have to know. It’s Sitwell. He’s going to ground. I know what he tried to do to you and Steve. He said he had no choice, but that is always what guilty men say.”

“You know where he is?”

“I know where he will be. There’s a plane to Guatemala leaving in an hour from JFK. He’s going to be on flight 323. I know, because he tried to get me to go with him and hide from Triskelion, but I’m not going anywhere with that man.”

“Pietro, do you have somewhere to go? Are you safe?”

“I will be fine. Don’t let that man get away, if you can help it. He still has a promise to keep.”

“Promise?”

The line was dead. Bucky looked at his phone’s screen to see that the call had ended.

An hour.

Steve was still dead-asleep and Bucky couldn’t wait. He took the hotel’s stationery and wrote a hasty note, making sure it was exactly where Steve could see it before grabbing his coat and keys, and then his gun.

#

Flight 323. If Bucky was lucky, the flight numbers and gate wouldn’t have changed. Security had taken so long that Bucky’s anxiety spiked and he was rushing to find the gate. He hadn’t taken a flight out of JFK in ages, and didn’t know if Sitwell would even be boarding yet.

He found Gate 90 and searched the terminal—that’s when he spotted the nervous, fidgeting figure in a line of coach passengers to board. He stalked up behind him and grabbed Sitwell by the arm, careful to stay just behind him.

“I hear Guatemala is beautiful this time of year,” Bucky said.

Sitwell stiffened and his eyes went wide. “Detective.”

“Let’s get some Cinnabon or something, I’m starving.”

“I _have_ to get on this plane.”

“Guatemala will still be there.”

Bucky pulled him out of the queue and steered him to the bathroom. Bucky found an empty stall and shoved Sitwell onto the seat. Sitwell dropped his carry on and grabbed the edges of the seat to keep from falling off. Bucky shut the door and locked it behind them and turned to Sitwell, knowing that it was the fury in his face that was causing Sitwell’s eyes to widen and shake.

“I didn’t know what they were gonna do,” Sitwell said.

“Yes, you did,” Bucky said. “What the hell else was Zola going to do when he cornered us there? He sent _Crossbones_ after us. He was going to _eviscerate_ us. What part of that did you not know was going to happen?”

“You think I had a choice? It’s _Triskelion_. They’re about to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’ve taken care of anybody who’s gotten in their way. They made me make that phone call.”

“You could have warned us then, _somehow_. You didn’t. You didn’t even come forward afterwards.”

“They told me to go away. They threatened me. And the money was too good.”

“ _The money_?”

Sitwell’s mouth flapped as he tried to get more argument out, but all that had happened with his open mouth is that he’d put his foot in it.

“They’re giving me money to start a new life,” Sitwell said. “And I’m broke. I’ve _been_ broke. My life savings have been eaten up. I can’t get a job anywhere. This is the only way I survive this.”

“What about us?” Bucky said. “Steve and I, we’re not supposed to survive this?”

“It’s not my _fault_.”

Bucky grabbed Sitwell by the lapel of his ugly vest and shoved him back until he hit the toilet tank. He got into his face and Sitwell looked like he was going to dissolve in fear into the toilet seat.

“You’re coming back with me,” Bucky demanded. “You’re going to tell the police what you did. You’re going to tell them everything you know about Triskelion. You’re going to promise to testify against Arnim Zola and put him in jail for the rest of his life.”

“If I’m not on that flight,” Sitwell argued. “They’ll know I rolled on them. They’ll come after _me_.”

“I’m finding it really hard to imagine what that’s like.”

The sarcasm in Bucky’s voice seemed to unsettle Sitwell all the more as he tried to squirm out of his responsibility.

“Okay,” Sitwell said, putting his hands up. “So, let’s say I come with you. And then what? They killed Erskine because he was going to go public, because he had something. How do I know I’m not going to get shot in the chest on the way to the courthouse?”

“It’s called police custody.”

“Are you stupid? They’ve probably got someone inside the police. If they don’t now, they will make it their business to. All it takes is one cop looking away at the right time and it’s a bullet in my head.”

“You don’t trust these people not to kill you, but you were willing to take their money?”

“You don’t understand—”

“ _Make me_ understand.”

“You think I _want_ to run away to Guatemala when I’ve got pretty much an eleventh-grade grasp on Spanish and no family there? This is exile. But exile is better than death.”

For just a moment, Bucky found he understood. He didn’t envy Sitwell his situation at all. The sympathy didn’t last however, as his thoughts broiled. There was a choice. There was always a choice. Sitwell could have chosen to warn them somehow, or to stay and clean up his mess. Instead, he was running.

Bucky got a better grip on Sitwell’s vest and pressed him against the tank again.

“You almost got us killed,” Bucky said. “And you think I’m going to let you board that flight?”

“You’re not a cop,” Sitwell reminded him. “You’re just a guy. How do you think airport security is going to treat this if I run up to one of them and tell them someone assaulted me in the bathroom?”

Bucky sneered, lip curling over grinding teeth. Sitwell was right. Bucky couldn’t force Sitwell to do anything. He didn’t have the authority to arrest anyone. Even if he were a cop, he wouldn’t have had just cause.

Bucky let go of Sitwell’s vest and the man went limp without Bucky holding him up and he was trying not to fall too far into the toilet, or even touch it too much.

Sitwell stood, gathering his carry-on bag. He was meeting Bucky’s eye, though he was unsteady, unsure. Then he shuffled past Bucky and unlatched the door. Bucky could only glare down at him as he shuffled past, seeming to be holding on to his carry-on like it was his dignity. Bucky didn’t move, Sitwell having to awkwardly squeeze between his wide stance and the wall of the small cubby. Sitwell escaped into the bathroom and snaked around the corner.

There was a couple of men standing there, staring at him. They gawped at the sight of two men leaving the same stall. Bucky fixed the collar of his jacket and stepped out, not breaking eye contact with the strangers, daring them to judge him. Bucky found that he didn’t have it in him to give a damn what it had looked like to a bunch of gawping out-of-towners. He redirected the full fury left over from his argument with Sitwell to them. He could see them shrink.

“Long goodbyes,” Bucky snapped.

He left the bathroom and scanned the airport. Sitwell’s gate was still boarding, but he didn’t see him in the line. He had lost him. Whether Sitwell had rushed ahead in line or was just waiting for Bucky to be gone, he couldn’t tell.

A weight dropped into Bucky’s heart. He was hoping for something he could use, something to justify his trip to JFK. But Sitwell had been right. He didn’t have the authority to arrest anyone, and there was nothing he could do to drag him away without being arrested himself.

“Barnes,” came a voice.

Sitwell was behind him. Bucky furrowed his brow in confusion, but then looked down to see Sitwell holding a flip notepad out to him. The yellow pad was offered in an expectant hand.

“This is all I can do for you,” Sitwell said.

Bucky took the pad and Sitwell rushed away, looking all around him as he got back in the queue for his flight out. Bucky stuffed the notepad into the inside jacket pocket and stalked out of the airport, past security, and back to the parking lot.

He sat inside the close warmth of the car and turned on the overhead light. He flipped through the very few pages of the pad that were filled up. He wasn’t sure what to make of most of it, but the last page written on was clearly meant for Bucky to see. A message from Sitwell directly to him stood out on the yellow paper, circled in red.

Pietro’s not he only one

A phone number and address, local, was scribbled down underneath it.

Immediately, Bucky began to think up scenarios where Sitwell had had the time to come up with another scheme to get them captured again, some kind of contingency Triskelion had thought up just in case.

It felt different.

This didn’t feel like the methodical trap that it had been before. Sitwell had written this on a notepad in a rush just for him, off the top of his head. He knew this number and address for some other reason.

He flipped through the other parts of the notebook. Shorthand, somewhat similar to his own. There was no way he was going to be able to read all of it, but some of it was simple enough to understand and the holes could be filled in. And not every page was in short-hand.

These were notes about Triskelion. Not old collated notes, like the ones he’d given them so many days ago. This was _new_. Some of the notes were dated, the most recent one from the day before. It seemed that ever since Bucky had brought Steve over to meet him, his curiosity about Triskelion had been nudged a little.

Bucky entered the address on the paper onto his phone. It was just outside the city. Commutable.

He thought about Steve asleep in the hotel room. Night had begun in earnest, and there wasn’t a lot they could do from the hotel room. He wondered how long Steve would sleep, and how long he’d wait. Bucky had left a note. How long that would give Steve before he started to worry was debatable.

But if he could just scope the place out, he’d rest easier.

#

He told himself there wouldn’t be any breaking and entering. Just good old-fashioned spying. Sure, he couldn’t trust Sitwell’s intel, but if there was a trap waiting he’d see it first if he were careful.

It wasn’t a house or another industrial building. It was a bar. Not quite a dive, but nothing like the modern tap rooms that were taking over. Bucky watched the trickle of people going in and out. It was getting to the end of the week, so the place _was_ busy, but not so busy that it would count as a hot spot. They were at the edge of the suburbs, where life was a little sleepier, but not completely divorced from the hum of New York City.

Bucky could see into the bar through the high, clear windows. He wasn’t noticing anything familiar, or that set off an itch or a warning in his head. There was the girl behind the bar and someone bringing in snacks from the kitchen, and no sign of a bouncer. It seemed to be a really relaxed place.

Not getting anything done while slumped in the seat of his Golf, he ignored the warning in his head _not_ to follow any lead from Sitwell and walked into the bar.

The first thing he noticed was that there _was_ a bouncer. He was just preoccupied by the baseball game, looking more or less like a patron in his baseball cap and pale ale in his hand. Bucky sidled by him and wasn’t given even a cursory glance.

“Hey,” said the woman behind the bar.

“Can I get—,” Bucky began, then scanned the beer menu written in chalk. There was a hammer and sickle drawn next to one of the listings. “How about a half pint of the Red October Ale.”

“Good choice. These joke beers are usually just short batches of garbage, but this one’s pretty good. Plus, I love a soviet joke.”

Bucky had to laugh. “Same.”

She went away to pour the half-pint from the tap and Bucky scanned the room around him. Again, nothing was ticking any of the suspicion boxes. It was a clean, brightly lit bar with new TVs, and it didn’t smell like stale nicotine the way that a lot of old bars in the city did.

When the bartender came back with his pale ale, he glanced at her nametag. Natalie.

“My friend recommended this place to me,” Bucky said. “Said it was nice and quiet. Is that usually true?”

Natalie shrugged. “Every once and a while we get some married couple that decides to have their argument in public. You know, wine moms and some oblivious idiot trying to watch football. Other than that, this is my quietest gig ever.”

“Sounds ideal. I guess you’ve had some gigs that _weren’t_ so quiet.”

“It’s an economy of odd-jobs, most of them sucking. Kinda got lucky with this one. Hey, you want anything from the kitchen? The bavarian pretzel with hot mustard is pretty killer.”

It did sound tempting, but Bucky reminded himself that he was there to work. He politely declined and Natalie moved over to take care of some other customers.

Bucky sipped at his ale—not bad, just as Natalie had said—and scanned the place again. He wasn’t sure what Sitwell had been trying to tell him with that last note. He could only guess at it, coming up with scenarios that were both paranoid and far-fetched. There was no gang of villains waiting in the wings, no secret base he was unknowingly sitting on top of. It was just a bar.

Had Sitwell send him on a wild goose chase? What was he missing?

He nursed the ale for an hour, declining Natalie’s offer for another, or to try something else. He knew exactly how to drink in order to stay sober, also keeping a glass of water filled next to him.

The baseball game came to and end and more people began to file out. Bucky was starting to give up. He pictured Steve in the hotel room again, alone and possibly worried about him. He sighed and considered how he might make it up to him. There were quite a few places that were still open. He could pick up some sweets, something bready and sugary. Maybe that late-night pastry shop in Brooklyn that had just opened up. He searched his pockets for his keys and wallet. He paid for his beer and left Natalie a nice tip. She smiled sweetly, appreciatively. He raised his glass to her before downing the last, semi-warm remnants of his Red October Ale.

It occurred to Bucky that he might have wasted his time. There might have been something or someone waiting for him there, but it was either not the right time or right group of people for him to make any sense of it. He pulled out the reporter pad from his breast pocket and flipped it open again.

Pietro’s not the only one

What in the hell did that mean? He was waiting for it to hit him, for the revelation to come out of nowhere, like—

He saw stars as something hit him hard on the side of the head. He reeled and stumbled, only for someone strong to yank him over and throw him between his car and the one parked behind him. He was on his stomach, trying to push himself up, but someone put all their weight into their knee, pressing in between Bucky’s shoulder blades. There was something metal pressed against his neck. He sighed.

“I know what a gun feels like,” Bucky said. “So if you threaten me, use a real one.”

“Oh,” said a woman’s husky voice. “It’s not a gun.”

White and blue sparks erupted near his face and Bucky flinched away from it.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he swore.

It wasn’t a gun. It was a taser. And if that was just the warning, it would be a pretty powerful shock at full power.

“Who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”

Bucky’s brow furrowed. That voice was familiar. He’s just spent an hour casually talking with that voice.

“Natalie?” Bucky said, trying to turn around to look at her.

She grabbed his hair and steered him to look at the ground.

“Who sent you?” Natalie demanded.

“No one,” Bucky said. “Kind of. Someone told me to check this place out.”

“Why?”

“I can’t really tell you that.”

“You better tell me _something_. Who told you to come here?”

Bucky grunted as she twisted her hands in his hair. “OW. Jasper Sitwell! Okay?”

“Sitwell? Where is he?”

“On a plane to Guatemala.”

“He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t just leave us.”

Bucky’s mind began to scramble. It was a risk, but it was the only one he could make at the moment.

“He said Pietro wasn’t the only one,” Bucky said. “Those exact words. You wanna tell me what he meant? Because I’m stumped.”

There was a long pause from Natalie. “How do you know Pietro?”

“He’s a friend of Steve’s.”

“…Steve?”

“Yeah. And I’m a friend of Steve’s. Name’s Bucky Barnes, nice to meet you. Can you _ow_ can you stop kneeing the nerves between my shoulder blades? I come in peace.”

Natalie was quiet. She wasn’t putting any less force into her knee, and the taser was still inches from his face. But the silence was heavy.

“Does Steve know I’m alive?” Natalie asked.

It all came to him in a revelatory wave. The things Steve had talked about, the other kids he’d escaped with, and only one he’d talked about with mourning in his voice.

“Natasha?” Bucky whispered.

#

Natasha clearly wasn’t a beer drinker, despite the job. She poured the finger of whiskey into a glass with some ice cubes and downed it in one, locking eyes with Bucky, glaring as she did it. She laid the tumbler glass on her side table and stalked across the living room.

Bucky was stiff as she sat across from him. Bucky’s own gun sat between them, within reaching distance of both of them, but there was no way for Bucky to get to it. He’d allowed her to tie his hands together and take his gun, though he insisted it wasn’t necessary. No part of him wanted to attack her, even for self-defense.

Even with all this, she still held her taser in a hard grip.

“So, they got to Sitwell,” Natasha said.

“Thus, Guatemala,” Bucky confirmed.

“Just ‘cause you’re cute doesn’t mean I’m putting up with your mouth.”

“Fair.”

Natasha leaned back, slumped casually in her chair as she looked Bucky over. Bucky, instead of shrinking under her gaze, took the opportunity to look around.

There was nothing hung on the walls or installed with permanence. Sure, she had a fairly large flat-screen, but it wasn’t wall-mounted, but instead set on an oak-colored tv stand that had to have come from the thrift store, as its corners were rounded and it was threaded with gold-painted metal. The couch he sat on was soft, but ugly. He imagined it would be alright for sleeping on. The chair she sat on stood under a teetering lamp, and the collection of books next to it were battered and second-hand.

What was even more telling was what was not there. No family photos, no signs of a pet, no clues at all that a second person would be around, and no place for guests. There wasn’t a kitchen table or chairs to sit on, just a small card table with a laptop on it. He narrowed his eyes. There was no Wi-Fi networking modem. An ethernet cable snaked around the kitchen, though it was not plugged in at the moment. It looked like she only plugged in when she really needed it.

“I need to know what you know,” Natasha said.

“It’s not much,” Bucky said. “It’s probably as much as you. Less.”

“Does Steve know? That I’m alive.”

“ _I_ didn’t know you were alive. He just talked about you and I… put it together.”

Natasha lowered her eyes. Bucky could see the emotions pass through her, in the shadows in her eyes and the ways her muscles tensed in her neck. Regret, shame, fear—it had to be a jumble up there, to know he still thought of her.

“Why’d you do it?” Bucky asked. “Why’d you pretend to be dead?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” Natasha said, though the authority in her voice was softened by the onslaught of feelings.

Bucky leaned back on the couch, his hands up to remind her they were tied together.

“How’d you break your arm?” Natasha asked, conversationally.

“Courtesy of a hitman named Rumlow,” Bucky said. “Came after me and Steve. He was the one—the one that got Erskine, too.”

Natasha swallowed. “Did you get him?”

“Eventually. He’s in the hospital right now, fighting for his life. Cops shot him couple times in the torso. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll make a deal, testify in court against who hired him.”

“Who hired him?”

She was rapt in attention to his possible answer. Bucky bit down on his jaw. He wondered if it’d be wise to tell her.

“Listen, Natasha,” Bucky said. “There’s bigger things happening than just playing catch-up. You disappeared for a reason. I’m betting that reason has to be pretty important. Steve isn’t the sort of person you just casually ghost on.”

“No,” she admitted. “He really isn’t.”

Natasha got up and began to pace the apartment. Her taser was still in her hand and Bucky eyed it, knowing it was still in play.

“He’d want to know you’re alright,” Bucky tried.

They locked eyes. She was steely, but her emotions bled on the edge of her face and eyes, little tremors that gave a lot away. Bucky let himself be steady, hoping he looked trustworthy. All he could do was make himself a kind, blank slate.

“That’s gotta feel awkward,” Natasha said.

Bucky jumped as a knife flicked open in her hands. He recovered and held his hands out, allowing her to saw through the ziptie. Bucky flexed his right wrist and the fingers on his left hand. It had been awkward, being tied up with a cast on.

“Thanks,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, well,” Natasha said. “I know who you are. Just had to make sure.”

“You know who I am?”

“Steve talked about his friend, Bucky, a lot. He missed you, you know? I almost thought he’d made you up. Like an imaginary friend. Going on all kinds of schoolyard adventures, getting into trouble, inseperable. You sounded too good to be true.”

Something soft but stinging wafted through Bucky’s heart as he imagined himself from that perspective. He had thought of Steve so much when they were separated but never considered much what Steve had thought of when—

He brought his attention back to Natasha.

“You had to have disappeared for a reason,” Bucky said. “No one fakes their death just to start over. Pietro, Steve—they were your friends. There were others. You don’t strike me as the selfish, self-preserving type. Not the way Steve tells it.”

Natasha glanced at the floor, shame passing over her face for just an instant before she got it under control.

“There were things I had to do,” Natasha said.

“Like what?” Bucky asked.

“Things I didn’t want Steve to know about.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d do something stupid, like try to help.”

 _That sounds just about right_ , Bucky thought.

“Help with what?” Bucky asked, leaning in to her.

“I was close to something,” Natasha said. “If I went down that rabbit hole, I couldn’t take him with me. If someone found out, it would lead back to the squat, where everybody was hiding. Steve couldn’t be caught again. He barely got out the first time. I wasn’t about to drag him down with me. Then I didn’t have a choice. I got burned. If I kept going like I was going, it was going to lead back to me, and everybody I helped escape in the first place. I wasn’t about to let it happen. So, when they came after me I just pretended that it worked.”

“What was so dangerous? What was _that_ important that you would make Steve believe you were dead?”

Natasha gathered herself. He could still see her unease about him. It wasn’t going to do to have her distrust him at this point, so he shifted in his seat, leaning toward her. She looked him in the eye. She had a steady, unafraid gaze. There was nothing about Bucky that intimidated her, that much was clear. Even if he’d wanted to try and get at her using intimidation, it would never have worked. But she wasn’t as opaque as she probably thought she was.

“I don’t think either of us has time to be cautious anymore,” Bucky said. “You know what’s about to happen. Triskelion is about to make itself untouchable. We have to bring them down _before_ that happens. I have information. You have information. We need to work _together_ if this is going to work at all.”

“You know,” Natasha said. “I don’t need someone coming in at the last minute and saving my ass.”

“Natasha, _you’re_ the one saving _my_ ass. I’ve barely scratched the surface and you have been at this for years. I’m just asking to know what you know so I can be better at my job.”

“That’s what you’re doing this for, huh? Your job?”

Bucky smiled. They both know what—or rather who—he was doing this for.

“Most important job I’ve ever taken,” Bucky confirmed.

“Me, too,” Natasha whispered.

She got up and fetched her laptop and brought it back to the couch. She fired it up. He noticed it wasn’t adorned with tons of logos and was a little bulky. He realized it must have been something custom-made. She may have even put it together herself. When it booted up and she entered her password, several windows automatically loaded. She turned the screen to Bucky and he leaned in, scanning the computer.

“What am I looking at?” Bucky asked.

“You ever hear of something called SHIELD?” Natasha asked.

Bucky reeled back. That was a name he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“SHIELD?” Bucky said. “That’s something from the nineties, isn’t it? I remember kind of hearing about it as a kid.”

“How’s your history?”

“Uh, I was more of an astronomy club kind of a kid.”

“I’ll catch you up. SHIELD was defunded in the 90s. It was never a large department. A lot of people didn’t understand why it was shut down. They didn’t take up a lot of resources, just a few million a year. They were still put down as government waste to be purged for tax cuts. Nobody thought much of it after Homeland Security became its own department. But then I started digging…”

Natasha pulled up another window and zoomed in on the contents. There was an official SHIELD logo on the center and Bucky realized that, for the second time since the beginning of the week, someone was showing him documents he needed to have plausible deniability for having access to.

“They were on to Triskelion,” Natasha said. “Though, that’s not what they were in the nineties. Back then, they weren’t even in the youth rehabilitation business. That wouldn’t come until ten years later, when they started the HYDRA program.”

“What were they?” Bucky asked.

Natasha pulled up a picture. It was a gathering of people, some sort of candid group photo. Men and women were milling around, enjoying conversation. In the back of the photograph was a banner, a black flag with a strange symbol on it. A skull, surrounded by tentacles.

“Meet Hydra,” Natasha said. “The original.”

“What are they?” Bucky asked.

“SHIELD classified them as a cult. They were on their homeland security watch list as domestic terrorists. Real end-of-the-world doom-prepper types. Except after the fall of SHIELD, they took their agenda corporate.”

“What agenda?”

“How much do you know?”

“I know about the experiments. I know Triskelion has rebranded at least three times. I know they changed formats until they were a manufacturing conglomerate. I know the experiments changed your bodies and they were trying to use that research, probably for medical reasons.”

“But you don’t know what it was all for.”

“Are you telling me you do?”

Again, Natasha regarded him. Her eyes went right through him, as if he were transparent. Bucky shifted, though he had nothing he was trying to hide from her. In her silence, Bucky allowed himself to say what he was really thinking.

“I think Steve deserves to know,” Bucky said. “He went through this, same as you. If we all know, we’re stronger for it.”

Natasha’s shoulders dropped. She stared again at the picture of the cultists gathered around their flag. He wondered how much she hated them, or if she’d had to let that go in order to coldly work against them. Either could be correct. It wasn’t about to show on her face.

“They’re a doomsday cult,” she reminded him. “What do you think a doomsday cult would do with all the power and organization of a multi-billion dollar corporation?”

The image was too large to fit suitably into his head. The implications were absurd. He tried to scale it down, make it more rational.

“No,” was all Bucky could muster.

“Afraid so,” Natasha said. “It’s the end of the world, Bucky. And guess who decides who gets to live through it?”


	17. Chapter 17

_Rain hammered down against Bucky’s jacket as he pulled it over his head. Kicking himself for not bringing a hoodie, he dodged under the awning of a bodega. He shook out his hair and spit the rainwater on his lips away. He wondered how long he could stand there, or if he should just book it to his apartment. It didn’t seem to be stopping, and he wasn’t going to be getting any dryer. All the same, he didn’t want to go out into the deluge._

_There was a little noise which made him perk up. He turned back and searched inside the bodega, but there was only the two men chatting, nothing better to do as they also waited out the rain._

_It was almost like a creak, but it wasn’t enough like metal. Then it came again. He scanned around him, didn’t see anything. Heard it again. He looked down._

_The little ball on the ground shook. He didn’t realize it was a kitten until it turned around. He thought maybe a big rat or a bit of fake fur from somebody’s parka. Then it opened its mouth and made that noise again._

_Bucky scanned the area. The sidewalk was sparsely populated, and if anybody was looking for a lost cat, they were nowhere nearby._

_“Hey, little guy,” Bucky said as he leaned down._

_It growled and stepped back. Without thinking about it, Bucky grabbed the cat by the scruff. It struggled, but it was only as big as his hand. He picked up the cat and brought it to eye level._

_This was nobody’s pet kitten. It was nibbling and scratching at his hand, completely ineffectively. It was small, and malnourished. Too thin for a kitten. Kittens were supposed to be round and fat. He could feel the little guy’s ribs and the coarseness of his wet fur. There was goop in his eyes and Bucky gently wiped it away._

_He held the cat close to his chest. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t put it back down. By all accounts, this was probably someone else’s responsibility. His landlord didn’t allow animals. He could put it back down and it might survive. There were a lot of feral cats in the city and plenty of rats for good eating. It was dirty and was leaving a muddy stain on his shirt, it smelled, and Bucky never remembered having cats, growing up. It was just that it was so small, and cold, and it was melting into the warmth of Bucky’s hands._

_He tucked the animal into his jacket and went inside the bodega. He came up to the counter with a single tin of cat food and handed the shopkeeper a bill._

_The next day, he made calls to all his friends, seeing if anybody wanted a free kitten. He washed it and dried it and realized he was blue-gray, not mud-colored. The second day, he brought home more cat food, just in case. On the third day, he checked the internet and found out it was a boy. On the fourth day, the cat stopped yowling at him and fell asleep in the crook of his arm. On the fifth day, Bucky decided to call him Gunpowder. On the sixth day, Bucky realized that he now owned a cat._

#

From the silence behind him, Bucky could tell that Natasha was holding her breath. Out of the corner of his eye he also saw her nervously fidget before going still.

Bucky unlocked the hotel door with his cardkey and slowly opened the door. The room was dark, the only light coming in from the hallway. He was careful to step lightly and turned on the light. He turned the corner to the single bed.

Steve wasn’t there.

Bucky’s heart leapt into his throat. It was the first time he hadn’t known exactly where Steve was for near a week. The bed wasn’t made, the comforter was moved aside, and Steve’s shoes weren’t on the floor.

Bucky scanned the room. The note he had left was where he’d left it, but something was written in red underneath it.

You’ve abandoned me. I can only find solace in pizza.

Bucky sighed in relief. There was a place a few blocks down that they had passed on their way in that they said they’d hit up one night. It was greasy, open until 1am—exactly the kind of place someone _would_ be after a tough night.

“He’s getting food,” Bucky said. “Make yourself comfortable…if you can find a place.”

Natasha’s gaze meandered around the small room. There was no point in hiding the obvious from her. There was only one bed in the room, and that would tell her everything she needed to know about the two of them. From the slight quirk that passed through her face, he could tell she was taken aback by it, but maybe not surprised. Then she became interested in the diagram of evidence on the wall.

“You put so much of this together,” Natasha said. “I’m impressed. I didn’t know they were up to a lot of this.”

“You’re impressed?” Bucky said. “You’re the one who found out about the death cult.”

“Yeah, well… the only reason I found that is, I went looking for HYDRA’s earliest records. I found out there was a non-digitized archive left behind once SHIELD was shut down. There’s stacks and stacks of paper documents in the basement of an archives library in upstate New York.”

“Where upstate?”

“Let’s wait on that trust-fall exercise until I know you a little better, okay?”

There was a click as the door unlocked. The nerves in Bucky’s body spiked. There was no preparing for what was about to happen. He braced for the worst.

“I bought you a slice,” Steve yelled into the room.

He didn’t look up at them as he kicked his shoes off and laid the pizza on the dresser. He was in the middle of shrugging off his jacket when Bucky stepped forward.

“Steve—,” Bucky began.

“Where’d you go?” Steve asked, finally looking up at him. “I was—”

Natasha stepped closer, no longer obscured by the corner and Bucky’s body. Her steps were slow, almost gliding. She made herself still, her hands in her coat pockets. She likely didn’t know what to do with her own hands.

Steve froze. His face was blank. By degrees, his spine lifted him up, his eyes wandering over her figure.

“Hey, kid,” Natasha said.

Steve said nothing for a long time. He blinked, rapid and steady, his chest puffing. His wide eyes were transfixed on her.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said. “It’s just harder to get away with murder when you’re dead.”

Steve’s jaw became a hard, angry line. His eyes shook and he reeled back. He shifted on his feet, like he was either ready to run forward or to back away. Bucky could see him swallow, hard. There was a ferocity on his face that Bucky didn’t often see. For a minute, Bucky was sure he was about to see something ugly, even irreparable, happen between the two of them.

In only a few strides, Steve crossed the room and wrapped his arms around Natasha. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and returned the embrace, squeezing him tight around the shoulders. She then put her hand on the back of his head and pressed him even closer.

Bucky stepped further back, making himself invisible. This wasn’t a moment for him. If it wouldn’t have drawn even more attention to himself, he would have excused himself from the room. As it was, they were so wrapped up in their reunion that they likely had forgotten him entirely.

“I’m so mad at you,” Steve said into her jacket. Steve pulled away and Natasha held him by the cheeks, eyes wandering across his face.

“You look good,” Natasha said. “Like you’ve been eating your veggies.”

“Where have you been?”

Natasha moved her eyes from Steve to across the room. Bucky was suddenly visible again and Steve started, as though Bucky had appeared from thin air. He stepped out of the hall and into the room proper, looking between the pair of them.

 “Sitwell told me where she was,” Bucky said. “It’s a good thing he did, or we’d be in the dark. Well… more in the dark than we usually are.”

“I was close to them,” Natasha said. “Closer to the real Hydra than we ever were before. I couldn’t drag you in with me. If I got caught, it was just me. But if they knew where you, or any of the others were—I couldn’t risk it.”

“I could have _helped_ ,” Steve insisted.

“I know. That’s why I had to do it. You’d have sunk your teeth in and never let go. I didn’t want you to have to do that. But you went ahead and did it anyway.”

Natasha gestured with her chin to the diagrams on the wall. Steve regarded it and gave a sad smile.

“They got Erskine,” Steve said. “I couldn’t let them get away with it.”

“I’m sorry I missed the funeral,” Natasha said. “I would have liked to have been there. I’m sorry. I should have been there for you, too. I just couldn’t pull myself away. I was so close. My ear’s been to the ground. But I got them, Steve. We’ve got them cornered.”

Natasha, Bucky, and Steve sat around the room as Natasha explained to Steve what she had to Bucky. The disbelief deepened on Steve’s face as she revealed the last piece of the puzzle—who exactly Hydra was, and what they wanted. It was a hard concept to warm to. The more she explained it, the more Steve’s face began to shift into somber fear.

“How did this happen?” Steve asked. “How can this whole corporation be a cult?”

“The lower level employees, they have no idea,” Natasha said. “But the higher-ups, they direct where the company is going. They’ve insinuated themselves into the manufacturing and medical industries, and became large enough to lobby and get some politicians into their corner.”

“And they’re about to become even more untouchable,” Steve said.

“If this merger happens, yes.”

“We have to stop it. They’re going to have access to all this medical technology and then…”

Bucky leaned between their eyelines “How are we going to do that?” he asked. “We’ve lost Sitwell and his media connections, most of our evidence is circumstantial and maybe even inadmissible if we could bring it to a lawyer. We have to win this in the court of public opinion first.”

“How the hell do we do that?” Steve asked. “Who would even believe it?”

“We have a few things,” Bucky reminded him. “The tape of Pierce’s conversation with Strucker. All of the classified documents. Zola’s testimony. We can leak it all.”

“But who’s going to do that on our behalf?”

Bucky chewed on his thoughts for a moment. His face went neutral as something aligned. He stood up straight.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “But I know someone who might.”

It was either brilliant or he was about to find himself out of a job.

#

Bucky had the good sense to wait until the morning. Thankfully, his boss was an early riser, credits to the miracle of coffee and the apparent, inhuman ability to sleep only a few hours a night. Bucky was the first person in the office, after Bruce. The offices of Banner Investigations were quiet, and the artificial light against the blue of the outside darkness was stark and harsh.

Bruce blinked when he saw Bucky coming in with two people in tow that he wouldn’t have recognized. His eyes flicked back and forth between the slight man and the red-headed woman before fixing back on Bucky.

“Boss,” Bucky said. “This is Natasha Romanoff… and Steve Rogers.”

Bruce fixed the small man with a steady, squinting gaze. Steve nodded his head, holding the man’s gaze without any sense of intimidation.

“Jesus,” Bruce said. “You found him.”

The conversation that came after was matter-of-fact. Bucky knew how ridiculous it all sounded to someone who hadn’t been through it all, but Banner was a smart man. It wasn’t that he’d have trouble pulling it all together, but whether or not they were to be believed was still up in the air.

The story over, silence hung over them like a fog. Bruce wasn’t looking at them, but at a blank spot on the wall.

“You should have come to me first,” Banner said.

Bucky swallowed. He wondered how much of that was true. But it had been off the books—an unpaid investigation that would bring more trouble to Banner Investigations if it were official than if not.

“So,” Banner continued. “Kidnap, murder, human experimentation, doomsday cults… anything else I’m missing?”

“Corporate mergers,” Steve offered.

“That’s pretty terrifying on its own. So what do you need me for?”

“You have a lot of connections,” Bucky said. “I figured, you’ve gotta know someone in media who can leak all of this before the merger happens. This way, nobody will want to be seen doing business with Triskelion. They’ll collapse under their own weight. But only if someone leaks something.”

Bruce leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. He was deep-thinking, and Bucky wondered what kind of strategies he was cooking up. Bruce was a smart man, everybody knew that. He saw several steps ahead when he was running his business and taking charge of his own cases. He nodded and Bucky could tell a decision had been made.

“There’s one more thing we need to do,” Bruce said. “We need a closer look at their books.”

“How’re we gonna get at those?” Bucky asked. “We’d need a man on the inside.”

“Let me take care of that. In the meantime, I want you to contact this guy I know. He’s a journalist. I know you’re probably not too hot on them these days, what with Sitwell burning you, but I’ve trusted this guy with stories before.”

“How do you know he can be trusted?” Steve asked.

“Because the last few times I’ve tried to squeeze him for information, the guy’s clammed up like a seafood dinner. If I can’t get anything out of him, the guy’s the real deal. He won’t give up his sources, he won’t say where he got the information. So long as it’s real, and on the up-and-up, he’ll show the entire world Triskelion’s real face.”

#

They took the cab to midtown and saw the New York Times building clearly as soon as Bucky turned the corner. The skyscraper was surrounded by bustling foot traffic, even though the sun was only just beginning to rise. For some in the newspaper business, this practically had to be mid-morning. Bucky found a garage to park in and they piled out.

Natasha, Steve, and Bucky  stood in front of the red desk and checked themselves in. They were given visitor passes and made their way up in the elevator. Steve was fidgeting with his badge, and when she noticed it, Natasha rubbed her hand across his shoulders. He calmed down some and breathed out.

“What’ve you got to be worried about?” Bucky asked.

Steve sighed. “It’s just the last time I trusted a journalist he sent a serial killer after me.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. “But this is the New York Times. All the news that’s fit to print. And we’ve got a hell of a thing for them to print. No payoff from Hydra will make him run away from this one.”

Steve nodded, jaw tightening.

“I hope,” Natasha finished.

Bucky turned his head and cocked his brow in disapproval, as Steve turned around to her with wide eyes. All Natasha did was shrug, as if to say she was only being practical.

They got off the elevator and Bucky looked at the piece of paper with the name and office number of the reporter they were looking for written on it. He scanned the wall of desks, moving aside and making himself small for the fast-moving office workers moving past them. It turned out that investigative journalism was a job where you either moved or died. Everybody was moving.

Bucky knocked on a door that matched the number on the slip of paper in his hands. There was no sound from inside for about half a minute. Then Bucky knocked again, louder.

“Ah _fuck_ ,” came a voice from behind the door. “Sorry, come in!”

When they opened the door, there was a man dabbing his shirt with a paper napkin. He was holding a mug of coffee in his hand which said “Big Hug Mug” against bright yellow paint. He gestured them to come in, occupied with his dual task of cleaning his white shirt and drinking another sip of coffee.

“I’m--,” Bucky said.

“Bucky, yeah,” said. “Hey, I’m Clint. Bruce said you’d be coming by. Sorry about, uh—”

Clint gestured to himself and then to the rest of his workspace. It was a mess, Bucky had to admit. Including the journalist.

Bucky contrasted Clint’s office to Sitwell’s house. Sitwell’s boxes of old papers had been sorted and organized, whereas there was paper all over the place, including sticking out of and lying on top of the file cabinet drawers. A few unwashed mugs of coffee were placed around the room, and there was a dartboard on the wall with a five darts dead-center in the target. It was certainly…different.

Different could be good.

“Bruce is a good guy,” Clint said. “He wouldn’t send you to me unless he had a good reason. Pull up a chair, lets get to it.”

There were two other chairs scattered around the room and they collected them. They formed a circle, Clint coming around to offer Natasha his office chair and sitting on the front of his desk.

Bucky laid out the story as best he could. Natasha and Steve filled in holes and gave their perspective. Clint asked a lot of questions, at one point getting a pad of paper out and jotting down information in sharp, quick, and messy shorthand that Bucky couldn’t read.

“Jesus Christ,” Clint said when the room went quiet and there wasn’t any more to tell.

“If you need further confirmation,” Bucky offered. “We’ve got two police officers and a coma patient to speak to the events. Possibly another one of HYDRA’s victims to give testimony—the one from Sitwell’s article. If he decides to show himself.”

Clint reeled back, blinking and rubbing his forehead.

“Okay, but—,” Clint started. “Why me? What’s different about me that Banner thought you needed to come to me, specifically? I’m just… I’m just a local news guy.”

“He said you wanna move on to investigative journalism,” Natasha offered. “Consider this your big break. We’re handing it to you.”

“What’s the catch?”

“They threatened to kill the last one,” Steve said. “Unless he packed his bags and left the country.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Clint rubbed his chin, which was covered in a layer of fine stubble—it was mid-morning, so he obviously had neglected to shave himself that morning. In general, he seemed like the kind of guy who had a hard time remembering to shave, or to iron his shirts and was bad about getting stains out of clothes soon enough. The guy was a mess. But that wasn’t all he was. He had a framed picture of a dog on his desk, a bowl of candy out for visitors. He’d asked questions about the victims that were more out of concern than mining for story fodder.

Something in Bucky’s gut trusted Clint Barton.

He turned to Steve, who locked eyes with him immediately. Steve must have read the look in his eye, because Steve nodded and turned back to Clint.

“So, can you help us?” Steve asked him.

Clint seemed to be searching his own mind. His eyes were on the ceiling, but it wasn’t because he hadn’t made up his mind. He was making sure he wasn’t being impulsive. He was careful, and Bucky was glad about that. He was also glad that he knew what Clint was about to say.

“Okay,” Clint said. “Let’s do this. Let’s…leak the secrets of a huge corporation that is run by a nazi death cult. Yeah. That’s…that’s a thing I just said.”

#

Steve had an appetite. He was crowding his mouth with french fries and especially coveting his third refill of Coke. Every now and then Clint would raise his brow at him, but more in surprise than with any kind of judgement. Natasha had decided not to order something, but had bogarted half of Clint’s sandwich and his side salad.

“That’s how she claims you,” Steve whispered to Bucky when the pair were occupied.

From that much, Bucky surmised that if Natasha liked Clint, they were in a better situation than they were with Sitwell. He found himself wishing he’d had Natasha around when they met Sitwell. She had an easy manner that had Clint either not noticing or not caring that she was slowly getting a read on everything about him.

“Can you tell me more about this…,” Clint began. “Man, I can barely even say it. Death cult? Can we call it something better?”

“How about ‘bad guys,’” Steve offered.

“Specificity goes down better in news articles. Okay, death cult it is. God, what is my life? I’m gonna rue the day I got on Bruce Banner’s good side, aren’t I?”

Steve smiled through a mouthful of food.

Bucky’s phone rang. He jumped, his eyebrows shooting up. Bucky took a hard swallow of his burger and slid out of the booth.

“Bucky,” Steve admonished.

“I’ll be just a sec,” Bucky said, excusing himself to go stand outside.

Bucky’s brow furrowed as he looked at his screen and saw Sam’s name. He answered it and pushed himself outside.

“Sam?” Bucky asked. “The fed show up?”

“We’ve got bigger problems than the feds,” Sam said. “Though this Coulson guy could use to crawl back out of my ass.”

“Shit. What happened?”

“It’s Zola. We had to let him go.”

Bucky stiffened, the hair on his body standing on end. As if on instinct, he turned to look at Steve sitting by the window. Steve was looking his way and gave a small wave, which Bucky returned before turning back to his conversation.

“What do you mean, you had to let him go?” Bucky asked.

“His lawyers did some voodoo shit, I swear to god,” Sam swore. “We had no choice. Something about circumstantial evidence and illegal searches.”

“It wasn’t because—”

“Nah, they have no clue about you and Steve. They think we got it all from an anonymous source. Problem is, that won’t hold up until the feds take those bones they just found in New Jersey and prove they belong to who he said they belonged to. This Schmidt guy. Who, by the way, we were told by his relatives had decided to go on a permanent vacation to some tropical islands without extradition treaties. So far as Zola’s lawyers are concerned, that’s where he is until there’s a DNA test.”

“What happens to Zola until that happens?”

“He’s just out there. Getting ready to do whatever the hell it is Triskelion is up to.”

Bucky clamped down on his jaw. He turned to look at Steve, his stomach dropping into his guts. Steve looked happy, content. He was eating, and smiling.

Now Bucky had to tell him _this_.

He said goodbye to Sam and hung up his phone, taking a moment to himself as he sat outside in the loud sidewalk, people passing by him, talking or listening to music while stomping along with their eyes looking straight ahead. No one was noticing him shrink against the wall of the restaurant awning.

Something rose from deep inside of him. He was done being maudlin. He was angry. His vision was red around the edges. It took all of his willpower not to throw his phone down the street, knowing the satisfaction of breaking something wouldn’t weight well against the indignity of picking up the pieces.

He was already helping to pick up pieces, the ones that were left in Steve’s life after surviving what was done to him. Each tiny, sharp shard that he could find, he’d picked up, just so Steve wouldn’t have so much to do. It was something Bucky was willing to do, but he was aware that each piece of fractured life was unnecessarily shattered.

There was a knowledge, deep inside him, sharpened from experience, that guys like Zola never actually went to jail.

The sound of the city turned into a muffled whine, and his ears rung as if he’d just walked out of a concert. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t think beyond the knowledge that Zola was going to die, and he was going to make it happen.


	18. Chapter 18

Steve’s face had drained when Bucky told him.

Some part of Bucky wished he could keep it a secret. It would be wrong, but Steve might sleep better, at least. The fact had remained that Steve had to know.

They stood in an alleyway beside the restaurant. The air was still and stagnant between them as Steve took in what Bucky had just told him. All Bucky did was wait, nothing more that could be done.

Steve nodded his head, his eyes deep and distant.

“We can still get him,” Steve said, against the odds. “It might take a while, but it’ll happen. He’s going to go to jail. We just have to wait for the cops to catch up.”

Steve’s optimism wasn’t just strong, it was weaponized. The jut of his chin and the clench in his jaw defied reality. For a moment, Bucky believed in him, that he could take the world by the throat and shake it until it was fair again.

The fact remained that Steve was wrong. Zola wouldn’t be punished, not for this. And with the looming threat of Triskelion and Hydra, the world’s priorities might change too much for it to give a damn about one pathetic man.

“You’re right,” Bucky assured him. “Sam and Sharon gutted him in that room. It’ll be no time. We just gotta wait a little longer.”

The untruth of it hovered over them in the alleyway like a heavy smattering of smog. It was noxious and hazy, as all untruths are, but just invisible enough that the eye could ignore it.

They rejoined Natasha and Clint. Natasha knew something was wrong, but knew enough not to ask just yet. She just followed them with her eyes. Her concern was plain, but she preserved their silence.

“Hey, uh,” Clint said, breaking the awkward silence. “Me and Nat were just talking about your big bad.”

“Big bad?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. You wanna go for the hydra’s heart? Looks like Alexander Pierce is your guy. If he’s not, we gotta eliminate him from our pool of suspects.”

“How do we do that?” Steve asked.

“Well,” Clint said. “While you two were gone, I was on the phone with Pierce’s people. Guess who has access to do a piece on the up and coming merger?”

Bucky balked. He hadn’t even thought of that. It was brazen, walking right up to the dragon’s den and knocking on its door.

“Will that work?” Steve asked.

“He can’t take you or I, obviously,” Natasha said. “We might be seen. But Clint and Bucky? They can slide in and out of that building without being noticed. Unless you two do something to draw attention to yourselves.”

“I can be covert,” Clint insisted, smoothing down his violet tie.

“I can make sure he’s covert,” Bucky said.

His eyes sharply darted to Natasha. Her fish-hook smile appeared and disappeared in the snap of a finger.

“What’s the plan?” Bucky asked.

“Well,” Clint began. “We’ll have to pretend you’re a photographer.”

“I know my way around a camera,” Bucky said.

“Oh. Good. So, no pretending. We can work with that.”

“Great. When do we start?”

“Uh… how do you feel about right now?”

#

They took a car to the financial district, armed only with Clint’s laptop and Bucky’s camera. Bucky had always been a practical guy, taking photos for the job. He just hoped that in this case, his photos wouldn’t be judged on composition. His camera was checked by security and he walked through the metal detectors. Bucky learned about Clint’s deafness as he pulled out a very small earpiece to show what was in his ear to a paranoid security guard.

“Let me do most of the talking,” Clint said, pushing the earpiece back in as they rode up the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor alone. “I have a lot of experience pulling information out of people. I’m a pretty smooth talker when I want to be.”

“Really?” Bucky asked.

He hadn’t meant for there to be that much incredulity in his voice. If Clint picked up on it, he let it slide and pretended not to hear him, staring up at the ceiling as he thought.

The elevator dinged and they got off on the twenty-fifth floor. To their surprise, there was someone waiting for them. She introduced herself as Pierce’s assistant before she even spoke her name. It was Bridget, though Bucky was sure he wasn’t expected to remember that.

They were led into a large office, someplace that might have once served as a conference room before being converted. It was more space than any person would really need for themselves, and that was evidenced by the fact that it was sparsely furnished and nearly empty, a long stretch of carpet leading to a desk close to the windows.

That was where Alexander Pierce was waiting for them.

He rose from his chair, buttoning his jacket, and came around his large, sleek desk. He gestured to a table and chairs that were in the opposite corner of the room, near the door. They met and he shook both their hands before introducing himself, cursor and brief.

“Please,” he said. “Have a seat.”

Bucky hung back. “Do you mind if I take pictures?” he asked.

“Be my guest. Make sure to get my good side.”

The joke elicited a forced, suffocating smile from Bucky as he raised his camera and took a shot of him with his office stretching out behind him. He stared at the image in the camera’s preview screen. It was a contrast in messages. It was more space than any one man needed for himself. All the same, the sleek, minimalist architecture and furniture design wasn’t exactly the sort of gaudiness that most of the wealthy adorned their spaces with. It was, somehow, both grand and humble.

“This merger is impressive,” Clint said, casually.

Clint was trying to keep Pierce from knowing he was being mined for information for as long as possible. Bucky stayed back, not taking any more pictures, to make it more like a conversation than an interview.

Pierce had a humility that was reflected in his posture and casual body language. He was poised in his chair, leaning towards Clint in genuine interest, but remaining casual and loose.

“It’s not so much impressive,” Pierce said. “As inevitable. It’s the direction my company wants to go in.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“Companies can’t remain rigid. Stasis is death for a company. For anything really. Even an individual. Things have to change, radically. I’ve always believed that. Corporate mergers are often risky, but it’s evolve or die, as they say. I believe in the evolution of everything from the individual to mankind. I’m pretty sure corporations fall somewhere in the spectrum between those.”

“Are you of the opinion that corporations are people?”

Pierce laughed, curt and genuine. “Let’s not get too political here. I’m not writing legislation, or at least not at this point in my life.”

“That brings us to an interesting point,” Clint said, leaning in. “Do you have political ambitions?”

“I was once in politics, which is why I now work in the private sector.”

Clint laughed affably. Bucky was glad he had stepped back and made himself invisible. He couldn’t laugh, or even smile in Pierce’s presence. If they were right about him, this humble, handsome man had created a structure of human trafficking that had reached deep into the most vulnerable section of bureaucracy to mine for human fodder. Even if not aware of it, an unlikely scenario, he was implicit by practices and enabling. Bucky didn’t even have false laughter for this man.

“When you say things have to change,” Clint said. “Who does it change for? We’re sitting high above everything right now. What about the people down on street level? What do they gain to benefit?”

“A better quality of life,” Pierce said. “Improved conditions in hospitals. A faster connection to life-saving medicines. Pharmaceutical manufacturing in a company that cares less about lining its pockets than in building a better world.”

There it was. The motto that had followed Steve around through his entire stay, courtesy of HYDRA. Building a better world. He almost wanted to ask “for who,” but before he even could—

“For who?” Clint asked.

“Everyone,” Pierce said, as if it were obvious.

“A lot of people say that. We’re in a post-Reaganomics world. This is something that’s been promised before. How is your vision different from the trickle-down effect? How is this _not_ another grab for control of an already bloated industry?”

There was a turn in Pierce’s face. To his credit, it only lasted a moment. Bucky saw it only because he was looking for it. The man had realized what kind of interview he was in. It might have been that he already knew it wasn’t a puff-piece, but perhaps he wasn’t expecting something quite as targeted as this.

Pierce smiled and waved his hand dismissively. “I actually can’t guarantee that,” he said. “Maybe someone comes along after me with that priority. But right now, we’re a company with a vision. We don’t just have our word. We have the fact that we’ve risen very quickly over the last few years _without_ dirty tactics, and while remaining transparent in our business dealings. When we say we want to build a better world, that includes cheaper medicines, faster access to it, and safer drugs.”

“Those are pretty lofty goals,” Clint said. “Does your past in politics weight in on that at all?”

“Absolutely. I’ve seen red tape, lobbying, bad legislation. I mean to bypass all of that by getting to the heart of things. The world is ready for was Triskelion has to offer. It’s ready to change. We just need to give it a little nudge.”

Bucky wanted to punch his smug face. Instead, he took a picture.

Clint continued to mine Pierce for not just information, but quotes. A lot of what Pierce was saying would look incredibly sinister in the context of the article Clint was about to write. It would soon be clear to everyone what the new world that Pierce wanted to build was. The schematics of it was plastered on the walls of Bucky’s hotel room. It was built on foundations of innocence stolen, designed by wicked minds. It couldn’t be allowed to stand.

They gathered their things and Bucky took one last picture of the office and Pierce. He put his camera back in his case.

It was time.

“Just another thing,” Clint said. “Before we go. I don’t think I really introduced you to my camera guy. This is Bucky. He actually knows someone who had a big impact on the company.”

“His name is Steve,” Bucky said.

“I’m sorry, I know a lot of Steves,” Pierce said.

“You wouldn’t have met him. And it was a while ago. But he made a big contribution to your company. Back in its humble beginnings.”

“Ah, an old Tesseract employee.”

“No. He wasn’t an employee, and he escaped by the time you were Tesseract. You enrolled him in your HYDRA program.”

Again, Bucky only saw the shift in his face because he was looking for it. Pierce had control of everything, so there was no reason to think he didn’t also have control of himself. But there was a crack there, and Bucky had seen right into him through its brief appearance.

“I’m not aware of any such program,” Pierce said. “It might have been a project of one of my predecessors. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. I could only allot a little bit of time for this interview.”

“Are you aware that one of your chief engineers was arrested recently?” Bucky asked. “Doctor Arnim Zola. I’m sure you know _him_.”

“A misunderstanding, as I’m aware.”

“How much did the lawyers cost you? It was probably worth it. Didn’t want your boy rolling over on you. He seemed the type to crack easily. The threat of jail would probably be quite the motivator.”

“I’m sorry—you were the _photographer_?”

“I’m inquisitive.”

“As much as I’d like to entertain these notions—”

“Do you know what they did to them? In HYDRA, in Red Room, in Tesseract? Do you know about the surgeries, the serums, kids being sliced up and pumped full of whatever toxic shit you could throw at them? Do you know about the abuse?”

Pierce’s face was steady and blank. “We’re not affiliated—”

“Do you know what Zola _is_?”

The silence stretched over the entire room. It was so quiet that Bucky could hear the water in the pipes, the air conditioner, and the receptionist’s muffled voice outside.

“I’m not responsible for any acts Dr. Zola may or may not have committed,” Pierce said.

That was it. That was the full amount of responsibility Pierce was willing to take.

Bucky knew this kind of man. Pierce believed, somehow, that not knowing the details made him inculpable. That responsibility was reserved only for those who definitely knew, not even for those that might have suspected. Pierce would never admit that any part of the strata on which he stood was a layer of bones.

“I’ll be seeing you in the funny pages,” Bucky said.

Clint didn’t talk to him the rest of the way out of the building. Bucky was thankful for the silence, uncomfortable as it was. He fumed. There wouldn’t be any justice that they didn’t force, Bucky knew that much. If Pierce was untouchable, so was Zola.

They went into the garage, got into the car, and sat in silence for a few seconds.

“The fact of the matter is,” Clint said. “These guys don’t usually face any real consequences. They don’t do jail time.”

“You think?” Bucky asked, maudlin but curious.

Clint shrugged, his face sad. “This is going to be real breaking news stuff. We want to get ahead of this in this news cycle before the next week begins. We want this to be the biggest story for weeks to come, and that doesn’t happen by waiting for ink on paper. Sadly.”

“But it won’t make that much of a difference?”

“It’s going to be a shitstorm, but ultimately? The top guys will probably survive.”

As they drove away in their car to meet up with Natasha and Steve, the idea cemented. The one from before, the one that came after Sam’s phone call, when he knew in his gut that Zola would never go to jail. There would be no retribution if no one did anything.

Zola had to die.

#

_The waterfront factory offices had been closed for some years. Rust made rivulets of copper stains down the sides of the building and a no trespassing sign hung at an angle outside the open door._

_Bucky’s uniform wasn’t warm enough, even under his coat. Detective Sloss seemed to be doing better than him. The detective wore a long, thick trenchcoat that was in no way fashionable, but was at least imposing._

_Michelle Easting had been missing for fifty-two hours. She had been reported missing after the forty-eight hour mark._

_Bucky had been assigned to assist Detective Sloss on his rounds, in case he needed backup. It wasn’t so much that Bucky was excited—it was just that this had been what he’d wanted to do since he applied to be a police officer. It wasn’t just backup. He was shadowing a detective on a case, the kind of case he would be expected to run on his own one day. It was all happening. Things were aligning._

_But he didn’t understand why they had come to this dead zone under the bridge._

_“Wait here,” Detective Sloss said._

_“I’m supposed to stay with you,” Bucky reminded him._

_“There’s nothing that’s gonna pop out at me from in there. Not if I’m right about what’s inside.”_

_Bucky’s blood ran cold. They were looking for a missing woman. It wasn’t hard to put together. Still, Bucky stood to cling to some manner of hope. Sloss could be wrong. She could be alive. There were a hundred coulds, and Bucky might have listed them all._

_With the weight Sloss seemed to be carrying with him on his way in, he didn’t think either of them were depending on ‘could.’_

_Sloss was gone for a long time. Bucky had too much energy in his body. He shifted on his feet and tried to warm himself by jumping slightly up and down. It wasn’t enough to keep him still and complacent. That energy and his own curiosity pushed him towards the entrance of the building, craning his head to look inside._

_Sloss was suddenly there, a disappointed look on his face._

_“I said to wait.”_

_Bucky was about to talk back when he looked past Sloss. He couldn’t see everything, but he saw enough. The edge of a bright orange flowered skirt, legs, and orange mary jane heels._

_They both moved away from the entrance, Bucky in a daze. He tried not to look as if he were in one, his spine stretching and aligning. Instead of looking at the old office building, he looked at the underneath of the bridge._

_“Is this your first one?” Sloss asked as they stood in the cold air._

_“I served,” Bucky said. “So, no.”_

_“It must feel different when it’s a civilian.”_

_Bucky had to admit it. He nodded, once, and Sloss raised his brows. He was not surprised, but rather accepting a well-known fact for the hundredth time._

_“Not much we can do now but hold down the fort,” Sloss said. “Now I’m doing a homicide investigation. Just gotta wait for forensics and my partner to get here.”_

_“Any idea who done it?” Bucky asked._

_“The husband.”_

_Bucky jerked at the sudden and complete insistence._

_“How—,” Bucky began._

_“It’s always the husband,” Sloss said. “Well, almost. I’ve seen them try to get away with it enough.”_

_“But he won’t.”_

_“No. He will.”_

_Bucky’s brow knotted and his head shook in confusion. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You can build a case, you can—”_

_“We will. And he’ll be taken to court. Then all the money he’s got will get him out of it. You don’t understand, kid. Some men—they’re just untouchable. He didn’t even bother hiding her that good. He just didn’t want her stinking up the building.”_

_The more Bucky thought about it, the more and more incensed he became. He wasn’t completely ignorant. He knew that was sometimes how it went. But when it was this close—when he’d seen the body, even—he couldn’t imagine just handing fate the baton._

_Sloss eyed Bucky up and down. Under that stare, he shifted, finding it hard to maintain eye contact. He did. He didn’t want to be weak, not about this._

_“Who’d you lose?” Sloss asked._

_Bucky’s jaw went tight. He didn’t want to be that transparent, but he knew his silence said it all. The unspoken history of the missing was as silent and all-encompassing as the air before a storm. He didn’t have to say Steve’s name. He was there, with them. Sloss nodded, knowing._

_“Some advice,” Sloss said. “If you lost someone, do yourself a favor. Don’t get into this line of work.”_

_Sloss waved dismissively and put his hands into the pocket of his trenchcoat. Bucky stood in the cold, his hands in fists at his side. The presence of the dead hovered in the air, even though he could no longer see her. He swallowed hard as Sloss’ words rang in his head. Something cracked in him, a sense that he might not be doing things exactly right._

#

Zola’s neighbors were fast asleep, and didn’t wake at the sound of their ladder being moved out of their shed and onto their back wall. Bucky propped it up and slowly scaled it. Holding the case in his good hand while also climbing with one broken arm was awkward, but he made it to the top.

Zola was awake. He was working. His high-tech, semi-holographic computer displayed what could only be research and data models from his Triskelion projects. The stream of data in red and blue numbers and code looked like a beautiful, electric waterfall from where Bucky was sitting.

With the glow of the computer and the lamp in the corner of the room, it was enough light.

Straddling the wall, he laid the case on the flat brick surface of the wall and opened it. The separate pieces of the sniper rifle were resting in their foam allotments, waiting to be put together. Carefully, he assembled each piece. After assembly, it resembled a rifle and the last measure was to screw on the silencer to the end of it.

He propped his leg up and looked through the sights. He wasn’t in a position to fire yet. He just wanted to watch him. Zola was up late with a cup of coffee, scrolling through his project, trying to bring about the end of the world.

What Bucky found strange was that Zola looked so normal. Maybe a small, strange-looking man, but he wouldn’t have stuck out on the street. He was just a man. Through the curve of his scope he could see everything about him, as it was told in his living room. That he was a fisherman, that he had an extensive library and used his books often, and that he enjoyed sugary treats late at night. Any of these traits could belong to any type of person, but something brushed up against Bucky’s nerves. He expected to see something more obvious. Some clue about what he really was. Monsters weren’t supposed to look like whatever Zola was representing himself to be. But, Bucky figured, maybe that was what made monsters so hard to see, even in the harsh light of day.

A kind of thrill went through him as he looked through the crosshairs. Zola’s life began and ended at the point where those two lines met. The thrill was not one of pleasure. He held his breath. He felt pricked all over by needles, acid leeching into his muscles. His gut twisted. He had been so ready.

He taught himself to breathe again. He set up the tripod on which the barrel of the gun would rest. He began doing his mental calculations. It wouldn’t be hard. The wind was down, the subject was standing still, and the vantage point was solid.

Killing Zola would take just a second.

There was the question of the escape. He’d have to break down the weapon quickly, which he’d practiced with the cast on once, finding it fairly easy. Then he’d have to run, because despite what the movies show, the muffle on a silencer wouldn’t be enough for the neighbors to sleep through the blast. Making his way down the street with a case unseen to his car would be a brisk walk.

It was worth the risk.

He checked the chamber, positioned the rifle. Prepared himself to kill. Everything around him seemed to grow quieter. The city was muffled. Somehow everything seemed crisper, the way that the cold made everything in winter take on a sharper, harder edge.

Then, someone was at the end of his ladder.

He jumped and reached into his pocket, where a smaller pistol was saddled in its holster. He didn’t draw it. Not when he saw the wide-open face staring up at him from underneath.

“Steve?” Bucky asked through his teeth.

Steve climbed the ladder and Bucky had no choice but to make room for him at the top. He stared at the other man as if he’d been summoned there in a plume of smoke. Steve stared at him with hard, unforgiving eyes. He was pissed.

“What are you doing here?” Bucky said. 

“What am _I_ doing here?” Steve snapped. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“How did you find me?”

“I’ve read the same documents you have. You think I didn’t notice we had his address?”

“But how did you know—?”

“Buck, come _on_. You really think you could disappear and I wouldn’t know where you snuck off to? You think I wouldn’t know the only reason you’d try to lose me? You’re going to kill him.”

Bucky puffed himself up, as if he were about to be indignant, but the fact of the matter was that he was holding a sniper rifle across his lap. His resolve deepened. He held on to the barrel and the handle of the rifle harder.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I am.”

The two of them sat together, staring each other in the eye. They were in a deadlock. Stubborn defiance met stubborn determination.

“No,” Steve said. “I am. How do you work this thing?”

Steve reached up and grabbed the rifle. Bucky had to hold fast, because Steve had really tried to yank it out of his fingers. He was grateful that he hadn’t taken the safety off, but fear fired in his head and for a moment he thought the thing would fire of its own accord.

“Don’t,” Bucky said.

“You’re doing this for me, right?” Steve said. “Well, I’m here now. You don’t gotta. I’ll do my own avenging, thanks.”

They locked eyes again, over the body of the gun. There was a mote of fear in Steve’s eyes—Bucky could see it by the shaking water in them. Fear wouldn’t stop Steve. It never did. The only thing stopping him was Bucky. Bucky’s face opened, his lips parting, and his grip became looser on the gun. Without thinking about it, he let Steve yank the rifle out of his hands.

Steve caught himself, not expecting Bucky to actually let go. He stared down at the heavy rifle in his hands, adjusting to the weight of the heavy, black metal. He screwed up his face as he pulled his determination out from every corner of his body.

“Okay,” Steve said, voice weak and cracking. “How do I use this thing?”

Steve found a way of holding it. It wasn’t correct. He could tell that he was getting his cues from movies he’d seen, or maybe even video games. It was awkward in his hands, too heavy and long to be held out the way he was holding it. He pointed it toward Zola’s windows. Steve rotated his head until he was looking through the sights.

Bucky came closer, propping Steve up. He reached around and lifted the rifle, adjusting Steve’s hands to the right position.

“Rotate the lens,” Bucky said. “You can see him better.”

Steve adjusted the scope and when his entire body tensed, Bucky knew it was because he could see Zola in stark relief. There was a ratty exhale from Steve, just before he readjusted his grip on the gun. It steadied and Bucky could see that Steve was following Zola, who was probably pacing in his living room.

“They can’t trace this to us, right?” Steve said.

“Probably not,” Bucky said.

“So why _don’t_ we just…?”

Steve let the question trail. Bucky didn’t bother picking up the end of the sentence. They both knew what Bucky had come there to do.

Bucky pressed himself closer to Steve, sidling up behind him. He reached around and steadied Steve’s hands, letting him borrow some of his strength to steady the gun. He could see into Zola’s living room, even without the scope. Zola took a drink from his mug and then waved his hand so that the motion device would scroll the data along. Bucky laid his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

“We could, couldn’t we?” Steve said. “And just walk away. Like we had nothin’ to do with it.”

“Steve—”

“But _we’d_ know.”

Steve’s hands began to shake. There was a choke—not quite a sob—from his throat as the tension went out of his body. Steve leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the sight.

“Give me the gun,” Bucky whispered.

“I can’t let you do this,” Steve said.

“Give me the gun.”

“If I can’t do this, I’m not about to let you do it in my place.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“You think I wouldn’t have figured out that it was you? You don’t think I’d know?”

“Steve—”

“Stop it. I won’t have you killing someone on account of me. Especially not him. _Never_ him. We’ll find a way to make him pay. Somehow. But not this. He’s not worth more nightmares.”

They sat in the silence that came after. Bucky hadn’t wanted to think about it. In fact, he’d actively turned his mind when he considered the consequences of killing on his own mind. He’d tried to make it about something bigger than himself. He tried to tell himself that it was justice and that would take the sting away. But he’d already killed. A big concept like ‘war’ or ‘duty’ didn’t keep anything at bay. He knew that.

“He’s going to go to jail for the rest of his life,” Steve said.

“How do you know that?” Bucky asked.

“Because we’re going to make it happen.”

There was no doubt in Steve’s face when he turned around to look at Bucky. In the low light of night, Bucky could see the wind slightly rake Steve’s hair and the way that the light pooled around Steve’s wide eyes. At the same moment, they both looked down at the rifle.

Steve handed the gun over to Bucky, with the trust that it wouldn’t be used.

Bucky disassembled the gun and put it back into its case, and when it was all over, Bucky entrusted Steve to carry it. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t trust himself. It was that he wanted Steve to feel secure.

No one saw them leave. They moved out of the neighborhood like ghosts and got into Bucky’s car, blocks away, not saying one word until they were back at the hotel.

“I promise,” was all Bucky said before Steve kissed him and they fell backwards into bed, limbs wrapped around each other until they fell asleep.


	19. Chapter 19

It was early. Ridiculously early. So early that Bucky had let the phone ring, forgetting his maxim to always pick up the phone, no matter what. Steve was beginning to stir in his arms, burrowing into Bucky’s chest. He reached over to the bedside table, careful not to wake Steve, who was moaning and stirring already. He blinked, getting used to the bright light of the cell phone. The missed call from Dr. Cho was marked ‘urgent.’

Bucky’s nerves spiked. He extricated himself from the bed, Steve really waking up. Bucky winced, wishing he could have let him sleep.

“Whatsit?” Steve mumbled.

“Go back to bed,” Bucky said. “It’s early, still.”

For a moment, it seemed as if Steve would roll over and go back to sleep, but he pushed himself up to sit down. Bucky went to the window and looked outside. It was pre-dawn, the light not yet rosy. He pressed the callback button and held it up to his ear.

“Mr. Barnes,” Dr. Cho said. “I’m so sorry to call so early—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Bucky assured her.

“I need you to turn on the news. Immediately.”

Bucky turned to see Steve sitting on the bed, eyes quizzical as he waited for some news. Bucky narrowed his eyes and turned on the TV, switching from an infomercial to the news.

The images of the early-morning subway jam-packed with smoke came to them through shaky cell-phone footage. A handful of people rushed from the billowing smoke, screaming and shouting. He knew what this was. He’d lived in New York all his life. He’d lived through this before. It couldn’t be anything else.

Steve rose slowly, his eyes fixated on the television. He knew what he was witnessing too. The terror of it slowly dawned on it, and his adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed, hard.

“Are you seeing it?” Dr. Cho asked.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky said.

“Nobody’s died, but people are sick. Someone’s released a gas in the subway, and it’s effecting people as if they’re diseased. Call it intuition but I think this is them.”

The doc was smart, and if Bucky wasn’t mistaken, also intuitive. They were working on the same level.

There were only a handful of people on the five a.m. train. Early risers and people coming down from late nights. It was just enough people to scare, but not so many people that it would be a mess. The perfect time to do a test run.

It all formed in Bucky’s mind, as if he had been looking at the corner of an image without realizing he could step back and see the entire thing in full.

“It’s a test run,” Bucky said, both Steve and Dr. Cho listening. “Agent. They said there was an agent. It’s not a man. A weaponized disease agent. We’ve been looking for a man, and this whole time they’ve been planning an attack. And they think they’re the only ones who have a cure.”

“I’m heading there now,” Dr. Cho said. “With a few vials of the serum I made the last two days.”

“No,” Bucky said. “Stay where you are.”

“Do _you_ know how to administer the serums?”

Bucky sucked on his teeth. He had to admit that he didn’t. But he wasn’t about to stay in the hotel room, either. The station being hit was a short drive away, if the roads weren’t shut down, and they could make it on foot the rest of the way.

“I’m going,” Steve said, rushing to put on his clothes.

“You can’t,” Bucky said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Not for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m immune. I have to be. I can help. I can do _something_.”

“Steve—”

“I’m _going_.”

Bucky sighed. Steve was determined. He was going, and there wasn’t much Bucky could do about it but be his ride.

#

Bucky sped through the streets until they finally met a road blockade. He messily parked on a side-street and the pair of them started down the alley. Steve grabbed Bucky’s jacket and he skidded to a stop.

“The police will block that street,” Steve said. “Follow me.”

It was like old times. Steve seemed to know exactly where to go, what fences to jump and what corners to cut in order to get to the station. When they reached the station, a group of officers were standing on the entrance to the subway, medics pulling unconscious bodies and leading coughing, bent victims from underground. Dr. Cho was standing there holding a large silver briefcase, talking to several people in uniform, both police and medical first responders. An officer came forward once he saw the two of them and put his arms out to block them.

“Get back behind the barriers,” the officer said, pushing them back.

“Officer, wait!” Dr. Cho said. “They’re here to help.”

“They’re not authorized—”

“Do you want me to inoculate these victims or not? They need to be in quarantine _immediately_ , along with all first responders who’ve had contact with them. I need these men to assist me, since we’re the only ones completely aware of the nature of the situation. It’s a chemical attack. These people are very sick. Stop all trains coming through this station, have other precincts on alert for other attacks, and stay as far away from the chemical cloud as you possibly can.”

The officers were stunned by her direct and forceful commands. They stared down at the petite, neatly-dressed woman. One of them grabbed the radio on his shoulder and began relaying the instructions.

Steve raised his brow and shared a look with Bucky. Impressed with the doctor, they followed her into the fray of when she waved at them to follow her.

#

The crowd was corralled before anybody was mistakenly taken away to a secondary location. Even one ambulance leaving the scene could have infected an entire hospital, depending on how the agent mutated and spread. Instead, the hospitals came to them. Field tents were brought in, which Bucky helped to set it up. As he helped people, he tried not to think of what he might be uknowingly inhaling or touching. He wasn’t sure how the disease spread or if he was infected, just that administering the serum took a lot of convincing on behalf of the people who had just lived through a chemical attack.

There was a moment where Bucky could step back and breathe. He left a tent full of volunteer medics and nurses in masks, pulling down his own mask to breathe fresh air. He knew it might not even be fresh. The gas could be seeping up from underground, the disease might be airborne—there were a hundred unknowns. He just needed a break from them all.

“You alright?” came a voice from behind him.

Steve left the same tent, taking his mask off to talk.

Bucky nodded. “Little cramped in there.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what made him turn his head. It was a chill that ran through him and the hair on the back of his neck tickled. When he craned his head there was a man on the other side of the police barrier, talking on his cell phone. His eyes were studying the scene, likely relaying everything he was seeing into the phone. Bucky narrowed his eyes and the two locked gazes.

“Steve,” Bucky said. “You stay with Dr. Cho.”

“Bucky?”

Bucky stalked closer to the man, who began to shy away. He darted back through the crowd and Bucky picked up the pace. He saw him try to squirm away around a corner, but Bucky could still see him. When the man’s eyes darted back to him Bucky saw him pick up his feet and run.

Bucky chased him, booking it down the street. If anybody else had spotted them, Bucky couldn’t hear footsteps. With a possible Hydra terrorist getting away, he wasn’t concerned with what was behind him. The guy was big, but wasn’t that fast of a runner. Bucky knew he could gain, just so long as he didn’t have any tricks up his sleeves.

Eventually, the two of them came to a large alleyway. The man was about to try to lose him in there. They came to a fence and Bucky drew his weapon just as the man was scaling it.

“Don’t move!” Bucky said. “I _will_ shoot you, I swear to god.”

Knowing he had a gun pointed to him, the man stepped down from the fence, hitting the ground with a heavy stomp. He lifted his hands, backed closer to Bucky, and turned around.

He then took a few steps forward.

“I. Will. Shoot,” Bucky snapped.

It was quick.

There was a plume of smoke. It stung his eyes and he cried out, clutching his face. It was instinctual, like he were being maced. For a moment, Bucky thought he _had_ been maced.

Then he remembered the chemical cloud under the city streets. The panic. The victims already showing symptoms. It was concentrated, weaponized sickness. He flashed back to the victims in the tents, many of them healthy, but a handful immobilized and in shock.

His throat began to close, and then he was knocked back. He felt and heard his gun scatter on the floor. Then he was being punched. Again and again. The violence wouldn’t stop, no matter how much he put his hands up against it. He tried to crawl away, but the guy had his hand on his throat—

The bang echoed off the brick and concrete and the man above him yelled. Through the slit in his eyes which Bucky could see through, the man was holding his shoulder. When he lifted his hand, it was gushing with red. Another bang and he screamed again, rolling off of Bucky.

Bucky collapsed back down onto the ground, arms going limp by his side. He could hear, but not see, the man beside him crawling away.

“Stay there,” came a familiar voice. “Or I shoot again.”

Steve. Bucky realized that Steve must have followed him. Of course he had followed him. Somewhere along the line, he’d grabbed his dropped gun and disabled the attacker. He could hear footsteps running toward him and felt the presence of Steve dropping down next to him.

He heard the police order the man to the ground and the sound of handcuffs. The scene was coming to him through waves of pain and dizziness.

“Bucky,” Steve said. “Hold on.”

There was a sharp pain in his arm. A pinch. He hissed.

The world dropped out under him.

#

_Bucky woke to the feathery feeling of fingers on his face. Steve took his hand away as he realized he had woken him. Bucky reached up and grabbed Steve’s hand, as if to make sure he knew it was okay. He wasn’t quite capable of words yet. He was too deep into sleep for that. But it felt good to have Steve’s hand in his. Steve came closer, until their bodies were pressed together and their faces were inches away._

_“I don’t want to go,” Steve whispered._

_Bucky came a little further out of his sleep. Puzzled, it took him some time to remember where he was and what was going on._

_A chill went through him. He had almost killed a man. Even if that man had been Arnim Zola, it would still have been murder. The case with the rifle in it was propped up against a dresser. His only salvation was laying next to him, saying things he didn’t understand._

_“I don’t understand,” Bucky said. “Go where?”_

_Steve’s eyes roamed over his face, searching in the dark. Bucky’s searched back. Steve reached up and put the tips of his fingers against his mouth. It was strangely tender, but no passion in it—only wonder._

_“How could I leave now?” Steve asked._

_“What are you talking about?” Bucky urged._

_“I thought, if I could just take myself out of the equation—if I could just get out of your way—you’d be happier—”_

_He was no longer asleep at all. He blinked and his eyes were bright, taking in as much of Steve as he could see in the dark hotel room. Steve’s eyes were desperately wide, seeking something in Bucky’s face that he wasn’t yet seeing._

_Bucky reached up a hand and touched Steve’s face, grasping his jaw._

_“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Bucky said._

_“You almost killed a man for me,” Steve said. “I’m dangerous to be around.”_

_“I thought that made me the dangerous one.”_

_Steve’s face became half-incredulous, a small, wry smile curving his face up. “You’re not as tough as you think you are, Barnes.”_

_“So, I’m not scaring you off?”_

_“Yeah, right.”_

_“Then what’s the problem?”_

_Steve’s eyes flittered down. He had to take a moment before coming back up to meet Bucky’s eye. When he did, his whole face was open. Honesty was about to come Bucky’s way, and he braced for it._

_“I never really let myself believe—,” Steve said. “I thought this would be simple. I thought I’d get your help and we’d be strangers and I could carry on somewhere else. I can’t. I don’t want to leave. I never wanted to leave…”_

_“You don’t gotta go anywhere,” Bucky said. “Not this time. You don’t have to. Not this time.”_

_Bucky cradled his head and brought him close, kissing the crown of Steve’s head. Steve curled up around him like a cat, body clinging to him in a gentle ‘c.’_

_“I’m not going anywhere, either,” Bucky promised. “I won’t. Nobody’s gotta go anywhere.”_

#

Bucky stirred, the white lights burning less and less as he got used to them. He hummed deep in his throat and felt how sore it was. As his lips parted, he had the uncomfortable feeling of an unbrushed mouth. His voice cracked. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to say. His voiced reached for something, just to reach for it.

“Bucky?” he heard Steve say.

He blinked and saw Steve come close. He’d been sitting in a chair next to him and come over to his bed. His hospital bed, Bucky realized.

Steve had an apologetic wince on his face.

“You’re gonna want to come out of this one easy, pal,” Steve said. “Okay?”

“What—,” Bucky said.

He pushed himself up, mindful of his cast—

He looked down. He paused. His mind scrambled to catch up to what Steve might have meant and the reality he was seeing.

There was no cast.

It was like seeing his own appendage for the first time. He opened and closed his hand. He felt no pain, no stiffness, no discomfort. It was just his arm, whole and unbroken.

“How long have I been out?” Bucky whispered.

“A day,” Steve said.

Bucky reeled. “How…?”

“It’s Erskine’s serum. Funny side-effect is, it cures whatever ails you. All of it. He really did perfect it.”

Bucky sat up, Steve helping him by pressing the button to prop up the bed. Bucky laid his head back. His head was still pounding and he pinched the bridge of his nose. When he realized he was doing it with his left hand he reeled and pulled away. It was a bit much. Then he had a thought. He reached up and touched his forehead. There was no wound, and therefore no stitches. There wasn’t even the feel of a scar to mark where it had been.

His vision was still blurry. He was just seeing shapes, but his eyes were focusing fast.

“Where are we?” Bucky asked.

“Guess what?” Steve said. “We’re in quarantine.”

Bucky scanned the room. He noticed plastic curtains separating him from other beds that were stretching out in a large, cordoned off room. Doctors and nurses walked around, busy with their patients. There were even military men, though not many, patrolling for security.

With a jolt, Bucky realized how Steve must be feeling. Trapped in a medical facility, no way out, guards at the door, and doctors with clipboards doing their rounds. Steve was even dressed in a medical gown, the same as Bucky. The flashbacks. The anxiety. He couldn’t imagine what Steve was going through.

Yet Steve seemed perfectly fine. In fact, he warmly smiled when Bucky turned back toward him.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Steve said, his eyes welling up. “We’re gonna be okay.”

He turned and picked up something from the table next to the bed. It was a copy of the New York Times. Steve pointed to the article, Clint Barton’s name just below the headline. Bucky squinted until his vision decided to finally clear.

“Hey,” Bucky said. “I took that picture.”

He sped-read the article, absorbing the facts but unfortunately losing Clint Barton’s writing style. He’d take more time for it later, when he wasn’t dazed and trying just to absorb the larger picture.

It was the leak of all leaks. There was even more there than what they had given him. Clint and Natasha must have done more digging while they were quarantined. There were some private corporate records and a trail directly from the attackers on the subway to being on Triskelion’s payroll. That had to have been Bruce’s doing.

Then Bucky zoned in on it. The part of the story that Bucky had wanted so badly to shield.

“He put you in the article,” Bucky said.

“I told him to,” Steve admitted.

Bucky reeled, staring at Steve in wonder. “Why?”

Steve shrugged. “I’m done being in the shadows.”

“They even know about—”

“I said it was okay.”

They sat in silence. Steve rebuffed shame, refusing to let it be a part of what he was and what he had done. He stood in the truth in the article, and wore it like armor.

“People need to know,” Steve said. “They need to know everything. After this, after the quarantine is over, I’m, um—I’m doing a press conference. Clint and Natasha will be there. Pietro, too.”

“Pietro?” Bucky asked.

“He came out of the woodwork. He’s testifying, too. Seems he finally feels safe enough to do it. Maybe what Sitwell had been planning on will finally happen. Maybe we’ll all come out of the woodwork. Anyone who’s surviving, at least. Maybe Wanda will find him. I don’t know.”

“I sleep for one day and the world goes topsy-turvy.”

“Did you really say ‘topsy-turvy?’”

They both laughed, though it took a lot out of Bucky. He shifted further up the bed and his breath hitched. He wasn’t in pain—in fact he wasn’t even sore. Dr. Erskine’s formula was a hell of a health tonic. Bucky just felt drained of all energy and weak. It was as if he were one layer out of step of everything else.

“Sam and Sharon stopped by,” Steve said. “They arrested Zola. And not just for murder anymore. But there are no more pricey lawyers from Triskelion. There’s no more Triskelion. So, he’s screwed.”

“What do you mean, ‘there’s no more Triskelion?’” Bucky asked.

“The FBI went to raid the offices. Everything’s gone but the desks. They removed all the computers and the higher-ups are just gone. Everybody who wasn’t in a secret death cult are just wondering what the hell happened to their jobs. Which, good news, most people aren’t in the secret death cult. It was just a dozen or so executives, but they’ve disappeared.”

Bucky nodded, trying to take it all in. He rose his eyebrow at Steve, exhaustion plain on his face. Steve set his jaw, seeming sorry to go on.

“There’s more,” Steve said. “It’s Pierce. They found him.”

Bucky smirked. “They catch him on some private jet on his way to the Bahamas or something?”

“Washed up on the Hudson. He’s dead.”

Bucky blinked, stunned. He knew they were ruthless people. They were willing to hurt, to torture, to kidnap. He thought, at least, they would take care of their own. Pierce must have earned his fate. Either through incompetence, failure, or insult, Hydra had decided that it was time for their apparent ringleader to go. It might have been that he was just a figurehead who had the idea that he was in control. In any case, Bucky wasn’t mourning the world’s loss.

All the energy went out of his body. He stared at Steve, who held his eyes, steady, unwavering. There was still fear in Steve’s body, but Bucky was looking at bravery. He was refusing to let himself be in the shadows anymore. There was no more living off the grid, no more safety in the shadows.

“They’re still out there,” Steve said.

“Maybe,” Bucky said.

“I don’t know. I thought… I thought this would be a little neater. I thought if we found the heart of it, the arms would just wither and die.”

Bucky sighed. Steve was faltering. That old depression was kicking in, the doubts and the fears. Bucky reached out and squeezed him gently on the upper arm. Steve put his hand over Bucky’s and held it. Bucky aligned his gaze with Steve’s and held it there, refusing to let go.

“Maybe not. That doesn’t mean we lost. They’re not the invisible empire anymore. I don’t know, maybe they’ll never really be defeated. But the world’s seen their face now. We can recognize them. It might take decades to root them out, but they’ve got no money now, and no support. I gotta believe the world is shifting. The world knows how close it came to the edge. It might take fighting our whole lives, but we’ll fight them. We’ll win. We know how, now.”

Steve nodded. “We’ll fight. I don’t know how I could do anything else. But we’ll fight.”

#

Before the press conference, Bucky had to help Steve steady his nerves.

“It’s just some cameras,” Bucky said. “I promise you’re very photogenic.”

Steve snorted a laugh and rolled his eyes. He leaned back into the wall, letting his crown hit the wall as he stared up. “This is going to be a nightmare.”

“You were good at public speaking in high school,” Bucky promised.

“Yeah, but that was when all you needed was some foam board and the biology textbook. This is—this is big.”

“Pietro said he would—”

“No. It has to be me.”

Steve’s resolve returned in a snap as he came back to himself. They’d considered who would speak for the victims of HYDRA and therefore Triskelion. Natasha had been the first to volunteer. Then Pietro. But when Steve volunteered it had been _final_. He wasn’t letting anybody else do it.

Steve looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. It was the prepared statement that he would be reading to the press. There would be no questions, which Bucky was grateful for. Maybe Steve would be good for the cameras, but not if someone asked the wrong question and he became incensed. Steve going off was entertaining and awe-inspiring in real life, but they didn’t want to give the media anything with which to doubt their testimonies.

“Just pretend you’re talking to me,” Bucky said.

“I am talking to you,” Steve snapped.

“No. _Out there_. Try it now. Then just do the same thing.”

Steve sighed. Bucky knew that Steve was feeling stupid. But all the same, Steve began to shift, shoulders back and eyes down to the statement.

“Many of you now know the nature of the chemical attack that nearly claimed the lives of twenty-one people in the subway this following week. The people responsible, many of whom used resources from the Triskelion Corporation, are responsible for more atrocities. I can no longer stay silent as details come out about false imprisonment, horrid living conditions, illegal human experimentation and…sexual abuse.”

At the last words Steve sighed and dropped the paper. Bucky pulled him in, hands on both his arms and held him steady. He pressed a kiss onto Steve’s bowed forehead.

“You’re going to do so good,” Bucky promised.

From out of the wings came Pietro and Natasha. Bucky shifted, taking himself out of the encounter. They all stood together, knowing comrades in a struggle no one, not even Bucky, would be able to understand. Natasha’s smile was encouraging and knowing, while Pietro seemed to want to be anywhere else.

“Are we doing this?” Pietro asked, wobbling on his cane. “I’d like to get this out of the way so I can see Dr. Cho about getting rid of this cane of mine.”

There was a silence before Steve spoke that was cut by a voice breaking in through the air.

“No, I will _not_ calm down,” came a woman’s voice. “I need to see him. I know he’s here.”

A woman with auburn hair entered the room in a flurry, a security guard following close behind. She didn’t have to scan the room long. Her eyes caught Pietro as if they were two adjoining pieces that could snap together once met.

The room inhaled, waiting, even the security guard given pause.

Pietro couldn’t move. His eyes were shaking and wide. It were as if he were made into a statue by some magic spell.

Both Pietro and this woman exhaled a sob and rushed to each other. Pietro dropped his cane and collapsed against her, held up by the strength of their embrace. They held each other without any signs of breaking apart. Bucky knew this could only be one person.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to find you,” Wanda said. “I’ll be with you today, up there. I promise.”

Bucky, Steve, and Natasha gave the pair the room. It would only be a few minutes until the press conference. They would stand together, the known victims of HYDRA and Triskelion, acting as a beacon to draw in as many other victims as possible to come out, as Sitwell had earlier hoped they would. This time it would work. It had been a stronger work, and Triskelion had failed to mask themselves.

Pietro and Wanda rejoined them, holding hands as if they could be torn apart again at any second.

“Are you ready for this?” Bucky asked, turning to Steve. “You’re about to be the face of this. Say the word, and I’ll take the heat instead.”

Steve’s chest rose. He peered out from the stage to see the mill of reporters and photographers.

“No,” Steve said. “I’m done being in the shadows. If I’m gonna live, I’m gonna live in the light.”


	20. Epilogue

It was almost too hot to hang out on the roof anymore, but the evening was cooling, a breeze coming in over the East River. In the summer, the landlord had laid down some astro-turf and put out cheap café tables and pool chairs for the tenants to enjoy the weather. Bucky and Steve stood alone, looking out to the landscape of buildings that surrounded them. The sun was getting low, the light dim and soft as it glowed through Steve’s hair, though he was unaware of how he looked to Bucky as he stared off into the distance.

Bucky’s heart swelled as he got a good look at Steve. He was wearing new clothes he’d gotten just the week before with the first paycheck at his job, the first one he’d ever had under his real name. The bookstore gig was good—not well-paying, but good, and Steve seemed relaxed among the stacks whenever Bucky came to visit him. He was also ten pounds heavier, filling out his clothes better, though he’d likely always be bony and slight. Dr. Cho’s version of Erskine’s serum made him healthy, but it wasn’t as if he were about look like someone else.

Steve caught Bucky looking and all Bucky could do was smirk, slightly. Steve pushed his hair back, out of his face.

“What?” Steve said. “You’re lookin’ at me funny.”

“Close your eyes,” Bucky said.

“Why?”

“Just do it, alright? Geez.”

“Bucky, come on. I’m not nine years old.”

“You’re spoiling it, you asshole.”

“Okay, okay, just—”

Steve sighed and put his large hands over his face, disappearing behind them. Even so, Bucky knew he was smiling behind those hands. It was infectious even without being visible. Bucky held out his hand, palm out, something small and shining laying in the center.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “Open them.”

Steve took his hands away. As soon as he saw the key laying in Bucky’s palm, the smile ghosted away, leaving shock in his wake.

“We’ve been living together for a month,” Bucky said. “We might as well make it official.”

“I—I’ve been looking at apartments,” Steve said.

“So? Now you don’t have to.”

“Bucky, I don’t know what to say.”

“Yes?”

“Be serious, Buck.”

“I am dead serious. Move in with me. Everything you own is already in my drawers.”

“I’ve been trying to get out of your hair.”

“Why the hell would I want that?”

Steve’s jaw set. Staring at the silver key, he seemed to be on the verge of something, something building up in his puffing chest. His resolution had been steely, but it was dampening, collapsing under the weight of something else.

“I don’t get it,” Steve said.

“What’s to get?” Bucky asked. “We’ll be sharing rent, and I get to keep you around.”

“No, that’s not it. Why me? Our whole lives, you’ve wanted me there with you and I’m just—”

Bucky’s smile was soft and sad. He still didn’t understand how Steve couldn’t _see_ it.

“We’ve always known, haven’t we?” Bucky said. “That it’s going to be me and you. We’re gonna be seventy, sitting in rocking chairs, smelling like cabbage, and still kicking up the dirt.”

“Now we’re growing old together?” Steve said in an incredulous laugh.

“I just figured that was a given.”

Steve’s eyes were wide, stunned. Bucky could only tilt his mouth sideways, as if saying he wanted to grow old with Steve was no big thing.

“I don’t…,” Steve struggled. “I don’t have anything to offer. I’ll just _be there_.”

“That’s what I _want_ ,” Bucky said. “That’s all I’ll ever want from you.”

Bucky saw the slight tremble in Steve’s mouth as Steve tried to come up with something else, some way to make himself less of a catch, undeserving, and lesser than Bucky thought of him. He was sure Steve had reasons he could trot out in itemized, categorized lists why Bucky should not care for him. He also knew that Steve was powerless against Bucky’s resolve to love him.

“Why are you doing this?” Steve asked.

Bucky had a hard time gathering the words, then it all came out like a sigh. “You deserve a home.”

Steve took in a breath and held it, lowering his eyes to the key that Bucky was then holding out to him between finger and thumb. Steve reached out and took it in a light grip and Bucky passed it to him. Bucky could only put his hands in his pockets and wait for Steve to say something.

For a few seconds, there was just the sound of the wind winding over the rooftops to batter at their hair and whisper in their ears. Steve’s mouth parted.

“I’ve been in Brooklyn for a year,” Steve said. “Before that, I was homeless, really homeless, living in a squat, staying off the grid. I thought, if I could just get back here… and then it wasn’t the same. And it didn’t feel like home. So much had changed. I just… I didn’t know it anymore. It was cold, for me. It was the worst feeling in the world. But these last month or so with you, it’s like—”

A feeling was winding up inside Bucky. It was something like giddiness, and he had to bite down on his lip. He waited for Steve to gather up his words and go on, but it was so hard for Bucky to be still.

“It’s like—,” Steve stammered. “God, Bucky. It wasn’t Brooklyn I was missing. Nothin’ felt like home until you— Until we were— And now you’re givin’ me a _key_.”

The strain in Bucky’s chest was then desperate and taught, like a metal string being tightened on both ends. His brow arched up to a point and he could only stare as Steve’s downcast eyes, lashes hiding his baby blues. He wanted to go to him, to wrap his arms around him, but something was waiting to be said. He didn’t have his answer yet.

“Promise me something?” Steve asked, eyes finally rising to meet Bucky’s. They were sure and honest and weren’t flinching from Bucky’s as he held his gaze steady. “That we don’t get pulled apart again. Bad things happen when I don’t got you.”

Bucky reached up and grasped Steve by the sides of his face. Steve’s face warmed into a soft smile.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Bucky said. “Someone wants to come into my house, try and take my best friend away again? They gotta go through me. And the cat.”

Steve laughed, musical, his eyes sparkling as the light hit his eyes.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said. “Nobody messes with the cat.”

Steve’s quiet laughter died down into a soft sigh. City sounds became soft as they looked into each other’s eyes and searched, unasked for but freely given, for the truth between them.

“Really, Steve,” Bucky said. “I’ll always mean it. I got you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man, so many people to thank. I don’t think this fic would exist without the support and encouragement that I’ve received during the months leading up to the big bang. The slack chat has been invaluable, and I’ve met so many wonderful people. Thanks to the OG crew, you know who you are. Thanks to carterbaezin from the slack chat for the playlist that I’ve been jamming to for months. Thanks to the mods and volunteers to helped make this big bang possible. My beta, [dracusfyre](archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre), who has been such an awesome cheerleader and editor. Then of course there's [Alby_Mangroves](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Alby_Mangroves), who came in and gave me some really very wonderful [art pieces](http://artgroves.tumblr.com/tagged/after-therefore-because-of-it) that I adore and really helped make the bang a great experience--thank you so much for being my artist.


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